The UK: The calm before the storm?

The UK closes 2023 with what could be seen as a sigh of relief. Unlike the previous few years, 2023 has been slightly less ‘unprecedented’: there have been no pandemic restrictions, no record-breaking heatwaves, no energy supply shocks. Even UK politics has been comparatively tranquil, by its own recently frenetic standards.

Yet there are signs that this might just be a quiet eddy in the wider polycrisis facing the UK and the world.

This is clearest in our politics – an election is highly likely next year, with May and October considered probable months. And the mid-term blues the incumbent Conservative government, now led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, experienced over 2021-22 have metastasised into something far more serious.

Ipsos regularly polls on which party has the best policies on a range of areas including immigration, healthcare, defence and Brexit – of the 15 areas we cover, the Conservatives trail in all but one. Around eight in ten people agree that the government is doing a bad job running the country. The result is that over 2023 the Conservatives have trailed the opposition Labour party by around twenty percentage points, which would be enough for Labour to win with a significant majority of seats in the UK Parliament.

The election bodes poorly for another incumbent party too: the Scottish National Party, which has led the Scottish government since 2007 and won 48 of 59 Scottish seats in 2019 UK General Election. The resignation and subsequent arrest of the former SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon can be viewed as a signal of how far the party’s star has fallen in recent years. Again, the Labour party is likely to benefit: a recent election to fill a vacant Parliamentary seat in Scotland saw Labour win with a crushing margin. It is likely that Labour will claim far more seats in Scotland at the General Election next year than the two they currently hold.

From this standpoint the story seems simple: an election is all but guaranteed next year and Labour appear all but guaranteed to win. But the reality is likely to be far more complex. Despite their lead, Labour appear to be profiting from other parties’ weakness rather than their own strength – between a third and four in ten of the public still disagree that the party is ready to form the next government.

We also find evidence of further change in wider public attitudes.

First, we see the first tentative signs of a more optimistic outlook. While economic confidence remains underwater – our Economic Optimism Index sits at around -30, meaning that twice as many people think the UK economy will get worse over the next year as think it will improve – this is an improvement on last year when it regularly sat at -50 or even -60.

As the rate of inflation has begun to slow, public concerns have started to diversify away from the economic. The economy remains prominent and this has implications for our net zero targets. But healthcare and immigration have been rising up the list.

• This year the National Health Service, or NHS, celebrated the 75th anniversary of its founding. But it is far from being a happy birthday: Britons were joint-top of 31 countries in the Ipsos Global Health Service Monitor in agreeing that their healthcare system is overstretched – 81% agreed this was the case. And in UK-specific polling, two thirds said they felt that the general standard of care provided by the NHS had got worse over the past year. This perception is understandable in the context of record waiting times for treatment and a long-running series of strikes by doctors and other staff. The lack of a short-term solution means this will be a live issue over 2024 and beyond.
• Immigration remains a secondary issue but is rising up the agenda – around three in ten Britons mention it as a big issue for the country in our monthly Issues Index, among the highest levels we’ve seen since 2017. The number of people arriving illegally across the English Channel in “small boats” is rising dramatically and this is likely to be a significant topic of conversation in the election next year. Yet attitudes towards refugees themselves in the UK have transformed compared with a decade ago – the country is in the top three of 29 countries in agreeing that people should be able to take refuge in other countries to escape persecution and war.
• We have also seen changes in attitudes towards climate change and the environment in the face of cost-of-living pressures. Britons remain committed to the overall goal of reducing our impact on the environment – in Ipsos Earth Day polling, 63% said the country should be doing more to fight climate change. But the prospect of the cost of these measures has clearly given some pause: 51% of Britons agree that they’d like to do more to reduce climate change but can’t afford to. So, it was unsurprising that the announcement that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was delaying and cancelling some net zero targets received more support among the public than it did among business and opinion leaders: 47% of Britons who had heard of it said he was making the right decision and 46% said he was making the wrong choice.

The scene is set for an uncertain 2024: an election where the public are seeking change but aren’t sold on the alternatives available; an economy that isn’t really shrinking, but isn’t growing either; a public whose focus and opinions are fragmenting along financial, social and regional lines.

Rather than a sigh of relief, perhaps 2023 will be seen as the country taking a deep breath to steady itself, before plunging into more change next year.

Kelly Beaver

Country Manager, Ipsos UK and Ireland