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Are We All Becoming More Conservative?

Deborah Mattinson analyses the latest Social Attitudes Survey.

By Deborah Mattinson

11 Dec 2011, 09:40

The 2010 Social Attitudes Survey was published this week. It’s an excellent survey and this year it achieved the profile that it always deserves but seldom gets. Why? Well, this year, the media felt its findings begged a question: are we all becoming more Conservative?

 

The answer, of course, is no. But the question comes up because the survey shows a decrease in the number of people who want taxes to go up and more spent on health, education and social benefits (now at 30% - almost half what it was in 1999). It also shows an increase (+11% since ’99) in those who believe benefits for unemployed people are too high and will discourage them from finding jobs.

 

In fact this is part of a long-term trend: the growth of the ‘squeezed middle,’ no less. It is not people becoming more Conservative – nor as some commentators put it, using the terms interchangeably, becoming more selfish either. (I’ll leave it to others to debate whether being Conservative equates being selfish).

 

For some time, many voters have identified with a group who feel too hard up to manage without government help, but too well off to get government help – hence they are squeezed in the middle. A recent BritainThinks poll showed that 54% thought that government should look after the less well off. A full 52% went on to say that they themselves were the less well off. The problem is compounded because few feel that government delivers value. Just 14% agreed that ‘I will get more back than I pay in taxes over my life time’ – a devastating critique.

 

Right now the economy dominates everything and things are really tough. Unsurprisingly, people are more anxious than ever to hang on to what they have and to put their families first. Cuts are biting hard and six out of ten feel that they are being administered unfairly. This figure is even higher amongst women, the hardest hit.

 

There is another explanation too – BritainThinks’ study of social class conducted earlier this year identified growing resentment towards the least well off. Our polling showed, for example, that almost half of us think that if you’ve been out of work for more than a year, and you’re not ill, you’re probably not trying hard enough. The focus groups revealed a demonization of the poor that was most prevalent amongst the poor themselves: the more vulnerable to criticism you feel, the more vociferously you want to draw a line between yourself and ‘them’.

 

Does this make people more Conservative? Well, no, the Government’s own satisfaction ratings are in the negative and people are not at all confident that the Conservatives are on their side. Is it selfish? Well, no again. It’s just that when things get really hard the instinct to put nearest and dearest first is, understandably, paramount.