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Britons’ support for “big government” has hit an all-time high, according to a leading survey published on Thursday, as political parties draw up their campaigns for the general election expected next year.
Some 68 per cent of taxpayers thought government should definitely “be responsible for keeping prices under control”, the annual British Social Attitudes survey found, up from 29 per cent when the question was last asked in 2016 and the highest since records began in 1985.
The large study — conducted between September 7 and October 30 last year, during which time Liz Truss was UK prime minister — found that a record 53 per cent of people thought the government should also definitely “be responsible for reducing income differences between the rich and poor”.
Sir John Curtice, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, which runs the poll, said: “Both Conservative and Labour voters have changed their minds about the role of government and about taxation and spending over the years.”
Voters appeared “to be looking to government to take a significant role in finding a way out of the difficult legacy that the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have created”, he added.
Although still well below support among Labour voters, support for government to take on a bigger role has risen sharply among Conservative voters since 2016.
In the survey of 7,000 people, Tory voters were more in favour of the state assuming more responsibilities than they have ever been.
The findings jar with Truss’s call this week for her successor, Rishi Sunak, to cut taxes and rein in the welfare budget. Truss’s ill-fated “mini” Budget, in which she announced £45bn of unfunded tax cuts, ultimately sank her premiership.
Labour has a roughly 18-point polling lead over the Tories, with leader Sir Keir Starmer promising fiscal rectitude and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves ruling out a wealth tax if the party wins power.
Curtice said the “era of smaller government”, which Truss briefly tried to restore in autumn 2022, now “seems a world away”.
The NatCen study found that 63 per cent of people thought the government should be providing industries with the help they need to grow, another record high.
Voters also showed no sign of wanting a reversal of the rise in taxation and spending prompted by large government expenditure during the Covid-19 pandemic, with 55 per cent of respondents saying that both should go higher.
This is up marginally from 53 per cent in 2019, and the trend for higher taxation and spending contrasts with a fall in support seen in previous periods of higher spending.
The researchers said the resilient support for higher spending and taxes could signal a permanent shift in taxpayers’ outlook. The survey’s findings suggested Covid might have led voters to reset expectations on the role of the government at a “higher level than in the past, thereby potentially leaving a legacy of greater support for big government than has hitherto been the case”, they wrote.
