What actually matters to voters?

Lucy Kenningham | Issue 6 | Comment, Magazine, Uncategorised

From the Archive

It's the economy, stupid!

PartyGate has been dogging the Prime Minister for almost five months. Boris Johnson has tried multiple tactics: first, denying the existence of any parties; second, denying his attendance at any parties; third, explaining that, yes, there were parties, yes, he attended, but he didn’t know they were parties. Tory ministers have used the war in Ukraine as a reason to bury PartyGate. But Britain has changed prime minister during ten different wars that it was actually fighting. In fact, voters are more concerned about the cost of living crisis, and for the Conservatives to retain support they must respond to this. Professor John Curtice reports that at the peak of the scandal in February, three-fifths of voters thought that Johnson should resign; now, only half do. The pollster YouGov finds that 58 per cent of voters currently care most about the economy. That’s up from 40 per cent in September 2021 and only 24 per cent in November 2019. Households will be £900 worse off than last year. I...

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