‘A Labour budget for Labour voters’

The Chancellor was given an impossible task this month. Delivering a difficult Budget as one of the least popular chancellors in recent years, it has forced the government to look more closely at its own backbenches. In doing so, Rachel Reeves has avoided an important pitfall. This was a Budget that made a genuine attempt to protect the more vulnerable, according to Labour voters.

An important way that budgets are judged, especially Labour budgets, is by who they hurt and who they help. When you have to deliver a lot of bad news, it’s easier said than done to show that the right people are shouldering the burden and the right people are being supported through it.

READ MORE: Delivering in Government: your weekly round up of good news Labour stories: BUDGET SPECIAL

Among those who put this government in (2024 Labour voters), a plurality believe the burden of fiscal restraint is at least falling in the right place. According to the latest Opinium polling for The Observer, over two in five (43%) Labour voters think that those on lower incomes will be better off thanks to the Budget, while a further 21% believe they at least won’t be negatively affected by it.

On the other hand, half of Labour voters believe that the Chancellor has made the well-off pay, with 50% saying those on higher incomes will be worse off as a result of the Budget.

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This might seem like a low bar, but the Chancellor has already had two fiscal events where she appeared to communicate to her own voters that she was targeting the most vulnerable. She simply could not risk that a third time.

Rachel Reeves’s first Budget was delivered in the midst of the Winter Fuel Payment cut. Starting your social security cuts with something seen as essential for the worst-off pensioners was damaging. Almost two in five (37%) Labour voters believed that pensioners would be worse off; among the over-65s themselves, that number shot up to 70%. Strike one.

The Chancellor’s second fiscal event, the Spring Statement in March, came alongside an attempt to cut welfare spending, specifically by restricting eligibility for disability benefits. The reaction was striking. Half (49%) of Labour voters believed that Reeves had made people on lower incomes worse off, and three in five (60%) believed that disabled people were worse off. At the same time, Labour voters thought those on higher incomes were slightly better off (34% better off, 16% worse off) thanks to the Spring Statement. That is toxic for a Labour chancellor: to give your own voters the impression that you are protecting the well-off while targeting the most vulnerable is simply unsustainable.

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So while the bar may have been low, Rachel Reeves did clear it. It allows the Chancellor, probably for the first time, to say to Labour MPs and voters that she has made the better-off pay the most. And, crucially, it allows her to avoid the charge that she has singled out a disadvantaged group to bear the cost of fiscal restraint.

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