We all heard David Cameron and George Osborne take credit as often as they can for the raising of the tax threshold during this Parliament but a poll from IPSOS-MORI with fieldwork done after our Conference shows that the public just aren’t buying the Tory claims. 41% give the Liberal Democrats the credit for the policy compared to just 26% for the Conservatives as this graphic shows.
The commentary says:
The Liberal Democrats have retained most of the credit for the rise in personal allowances in the current Parliament – though an increased number are unsure who should get credit. Four in ten (41%) think the Liberal Democrats deserve credit for the rise in the threshold before people pay income tax from £6,475 in 2010 to £10,000 this year, while 26% credit the Conservatives and 28% say they ‘don’t know’. Both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives are credited by fewer Britons than in March of this year, when 45% said the Liberal Democrats deserve most credit and 33% credited the Conservatives; the number who don’t know is now up ten points, from 18% in March.
We are still getting the credit but, however sick we all get of hearing it, we need to keep on banging on about it with more gusto than ever.
A further rise in the tax threshold to £12,500 was also backed by a huge majority, 85% of people. The Tory policy of also raising the top rate threshold was backed by 64% and opposed by 22%. A similar margin support the Mansion Tax.
You can read full details of the poll here.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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6 Comments
Quite a positive spin there Caron! The direction of travel is that fewer people are giving the party credit for this – and you combine that with the general trend of loss of support for the party through 2014 (Ipsos Mori was giving the party 12s and 13s at the start of the year), and you have to ask some real questions about (a) party strategy and (b) where this ends up.
Now that Danny Alexander has been given the election role of Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor it is difficult to imagine the average voter will be able to distinguish between what was George’s Tory policy and what was his deputy Danny’s policy.
Gogglebox is unlikely to feature the various families on their sofas reacting to the election debate between George Osborne, Danny Alexander and Ed Balls. But if they did ….. …???
Does the opinion poll indicate that we will benefit in any of the 12 seats where a LiberalDemocrat MP might hang on with a bit of outside help? I doubt it. We need to stop reading the entrails of polls and get more people working in those 12 all important seats.
Clearly, from other current polls, the vast majority of those giving the Lib Dems credit for this policy are currently planning to vote Labour. Why could this be?
Surely the composition of the Coalition means that 85% of the credit is due to the Conservatives and 15% is due to Lib Dems. Or is that logic only used to evade responsibility for unpopular policies?
@Peter Watson: We all need to be clearer about how coalitions can actually work. It isn’t a matter of proportional responsibility for action on individual items, but how one partner can persuade the other to do (or not do) something it wouldn’t have agreed on its own. Either can be criticised for accepting a policy which it would rather not have done (eg tuition fees), but equally can claim (all?) the credit for getting something through the other didn’t really want.
The real test for success of the smaller partner is how far it has succeeded in holding to its principles and objectives in the face of what could be an overwhelming majority against it. Not as simple a judgement, I agree, and a lot harder to explain, but that’s exactly what we have to do.
@Tony Miller “It isn’t a matter of proportional responsibility for action on individual items, but how one partner can persuade the other to do (or not do) something it wouldn’t have agreed on its own.”
I agree with you entirely, and my comment was a little tongue-in-cheek.
But Lib Dem MPs seem keen to point out that they could not get things that they wanted/promised because they are outnumbered by Conservatives, but this must mean that Conservatives were happy to increase the personal tax threshold and deserve credit for that. Or was there a hard-fought trade-off: which Lib Dem policy did we give up, or which Tory policy did we accept, in order to force through the increase? Or was the trade-off really that we persuaded the Conservatives to accept the threshold increase but not the way we had planned to pay for it, and if that is the case, is the nett outcome really a success for the party?