A majority of Britons are unsure whether the cost of living crisis will ever end, polling has found.
The survey by the More in Common think-tank paints an extraordinarily bleak picture of public attitudes on the economy ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Budget on Wednesday.
According to the poll, 57 per cent of Britons say they are unsure whether the cost of living crisis will ever end – the highest point since More in Common began tracking this in July 2022.
It means the public is now more pessimistic than ahead of the past two budgets – when Jeremy Hunt revealed the Conservatives’ last Budget in November 2023, 36 per cent of Britons said they were unsure the cost of living crisis would ever end, while the figure stood at 47 per cent for Reeves’ first Budget in October 2024.
The poll also found that 52 per cent of Britons believe the UK is currently in a recession, despite the country not being so in the technical sense of the term, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.
(According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK’s gross domestic product increased by 0.1 per cent in the third quarter of 2025 and by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter).
“Poor, stagnant, bad, terrible”
A majority of voters als believe that public services (69 per cent), government finances (73 per cent) and the British economy (77 per cent) are all in a bad state, with each of the figures rising since the last budget.
In a word cloud, the most commonly used words to describe the state of the economy were “poor, stagnant, bad, terrible”.
The public have a very dim view of Labour’s stewardship of the economy, with three-quarters (76 per cent) saying they had little or no confidence in Reeves to handle the economy.
Sixty-eight per cent believe former Prime Minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak would do a better job than Reeves, and 65 per cent believe Hunt would do a better job.
Jeremy Hunt would do a better job as Chancellor than Rachel Reeves according to 65 per cent of voters (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP) (Photo by JUSTINSeventy-one per cent expect their taxes to rise in the Budget, with 66 per cent saying they feel pessimistic about Wednesday’s announcement.
Three in four Britons think the Labour government is just as “chaotic” as the last Tory government, including 40 per cent who say it is more chaotic.
Focus groups meanwhile picked up anger at the leaks and briefing about potential tax rises which have characterised the run-up to the Budget.
Focus group member Carl, a project officer from Chester, said: “I feel like they’re dealing with the budget in the same way that they’ve dealt with coming into power. They’re reactionary, there’s no plan. They keep leaking bits of it to see if it’s popular and when they find out it isn’t, they cancel it.”
Support for mansion tax
In terms of the Chancellor’s choices in the Budget, 67 per cent of Britons say they would rather the Government cut public spending than raise taxes on working people.
However, 63 per cent support a “mansion tax” on properties worth more than £1.5m, while 69 per cent support increasing taxes on online sports betting.
More in Common polled about 4,000 adults in Great Britain in November.
Luke Tryl, the director of More in Common, said the data showed the “real pessimism and worry” felt by the public about the Budget.
On the leaks to the media, he said: “Obviously Budget briefing happens around every Budget. I think this is the first one where I’ve had people complaining in focus groups about all of the level of Budget briefing that there is.”
Reeves and her colleagues have blamed the economic legacy they were left by the Tories – such as the impact of Brexit and aclaimed £22bn “black hole” of unfunded spending pressures when they came to office – as well as a deterioration in global trade because of Donald Trump’s tariffs.
On Monday, the Business Secretary Peter Kyle told the Confederation of British Industry conference in central London that there were “reasons for optimism” about the economy. “Slowly but surely we’re turning a corner and unlocking economic momentum.”
On the issue of leaks, Kyle told reporters: “I accept that some businesses have said that they are frustrated with speculation.
“Whenever business say to me that they want things done differently, I will listen to them, and I’ll respect it, and I’ll give them voice in in future, in future decisions that we take.”
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Kyle told the business leaders Labour had inherited a situation in which it the UK was caught in the “grip of high taxes and low growth”. “We are not going to break out of this cycle unless we do some pretty profoundly different things,” he said.
“I really think we have inherited growth emergency, and we are still in it, and we will be in it for as long as we are unable to get our way out of this situation without increased economic productivity.”
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