Are You Happy?

Are you happy? Nearly nine people in ten say they are. In the immediate run up to Christmas 86% of the 967 people phoned told Ipsos interviewers that they were either "very" (38%) or "fairly" (48%) happy with their life at present, while just 7% admitted to woe.

Happiness is pretty constant year on year. Last year 85% said they were "very"/"fairly" happy (39% "very" and 46% "fairly").

More Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters combined say they are happy than do Conservative supporters (89% v. 83%). This difference does not offer the entire explanation however. Happiness is also correlated with social class. Eight in ten unskilled working class families are happy, 8 points less than the nine in ten in the middle classes (ABC1s), of whom most are in gainful employment and hardly any living on state benefits.

So what makes politicians happy? We haven't asked that question -- yet -- on our twice yearly survey of the views of Members of Parliament (and thanks to those of you who have participated this past year). But we will.

Let's surmise what makes politicians happy. In my experience nothing so focuses the mind of politicians than the threat of loss of office. Therefore, election to office must be number one, then, for many I suspect in second place, a stable home life, love and affection from the family, and, of course, income to provide Maslow's basic human needs of sustenance and security.

The thought of loss/gain of office must be the principal conversation topic in the bars and offices at Westminster these days, even with election years away. After all, Government Ministers are aware that seven people in ten say they are dissatisfied with the way the Government is running the country. The Prime Minister will certainly be aware that two thirds of people are dissatisfied with his performance. Perhaps even worse for Labour potentially is that four in ten people (42%) say they would vote Labour in the next election are dissatisfied with the performance of the Government -- and nearly one in four (37%) Labour supporters are unhappy with Tony Blair.

It isn't easy for David Cameron either and his government-in-waiting. Shadow ministers must be unhappy with the Tory-leaning pollsters reporting scant Tory leads, not that I pay much attention to voting intention these days with the Labour leader at the next election yet to assume office, making the question doubly hypothetical.

The thing that really must be disturbing David Cameron's sleep (though he will deny it) is at the beginning of this past year when the majority (52%) said they were not certain how to rate the way he was doing his job as Leader of the Opposition, that then of those who were decided, his satisfaction ratings were nearly two to one satisfied, 31% to 17% who were dissatisfied. Since then, there has been a nine percent swing against him with now just 28% saying they are satisfied and 33% dissatisfied.

Even worse, only 54% of intending Tory voters now say they are satisfied with Cameron's performance, a drop of six points from the peak of 60%. The six in ten figure among Conservative Party supporters was from February, his second month of office, when the papers were exulting on the new boy wonder and the spin was that he was particularly attracting women and younger people to his supporters. .

But then Liberal Democrats aren't that happy either. Less than half (45%) of people who intend to vote Liberal Democrat say they are satisfied with Sir Menzies Campbell's performance as leader of the Liberal Democrats, down from his honeymoon peak in his second month of office of 61%, and he gets the thumbs up from only one in five (22%) among people generally.

Another thing that worries Government is that as soon as the problem is solved it drops in salience.

So it's not a happy new year for the political classes; sorry about that.