What is the public mood on cuts?

I can clearly remember the moment I felt the shift in the public attitude to government spending.

Think back to the start of the year - Conservatives were talking about "sharing the proceeds of growth" and Labour accused them of a secret cuts agenda.

Now cuts are the only show in town - from household budgets to local government to national corporations - if you're not belt-tightening then your trousers are around your ankles.

The moment I realised that the public mood had changed was at a public meeting in Romsey during the election. OK, that part of Hampshire is a well-heeled area, but I was surprised to see almost every hand in the room shoot up when I asked if people wanted to see spending cuts going faster and further.

Polling by MORI illustrates how attitudes have changed. This was the question asked on March 20th:

The Conservatives say that the national debt is the greatest threat to the economy and the deficit needs to be cut quickly, starting this year. Labour say that it should not be cut so soon as reducing public spending may stop the economic recovery. Which of these do you think is right?

The verdict was 32% for cuts, 56% against. But for those who said they supported the Liberal Democrats the proportion were 15/71 - a clear vote against the cuts.

Fast forward to June and the Con/Lib budget is now in place. A Populus survey for the Times asked people to say which of two statements they agreed with:

Britain's deficit is so serious that we must start making significant spending cuts now. Delay will only make the problem worse, increasing the size of our debt and the amount of taxpayers' money going on interest payments, not public services. If we delay, confidence in our economy will weaken meaning higher interest and mortgage rates.

OR

There will have to be significant spending cuts in due course, but these cuts should not be made until the economic recovery is much stronger. If we cut spending now we risk increasing unemployment and even tipping the country back into recession, when what we need most is to get the economy growing strongly again.

Now the results show 43/57 against the cuts, a much more even split, but hardly a resounding chant of "we're all in it together."

And this is the lull before the storm. Westminster is full of tales of civil servants with nothing to do over the summer. All the projects that they were working on have been halted and there's no point looking for work in another part of the public sector.

We're at the point of the execution before the axe falls. The victim has been pointed out, at least some of the crowd have voiced approval, the head is on the block. But when we see the blood will the cheering stop?

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• NowPublic |
• Reddit
• - What's this?