A pre-Budget poll shows the public want austerity to end but don't trust May to do it
A new poll for Sky News reveals just how unpopular austerity has been – with just 21% of the public saying that austerity has made the country better and just 14% wanting it to continue.
Conversely, 40% think austerity has made the country worse and 41% think it should end. The rest don’t know.
Last month, Theresa May promised to end austerity but the same polling shows that just 15% of the public believe that she will do so.
Even her own voters are disbelieving with just 30% of Tory voters saying she will keep her promise and 33% saying she won’t.
While most Tory voters think austerity has been a good policy, 29% of them now want it to end versus just 21% who want it to continue.
Austerity refers to a series of extreme spending cuts brought in by David Cameron’s government in 2010 and continued by Theresa May’s government.
These governments claimed austerity was necessary to reduce the government’s debt but critics claimed it was an ideologically-motivated plan to shrink the size of the state.
According to a New Economics Foundation report on austerity: “The decade of austerity so far has arguably been the worst economic policy error in a generation. As a consequence, living standards have suffered substantially.
Accounting expert Prem Sikka has written for Left Foot Forward on the ‘budget of national recovery’ that is necessary to try and reverse the damage done by austerity.
Joe Lo is an investigative journalist and writes for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.
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