Voters believe Chancellor John Healey’s Budget will leave them worse off, according to new polling by Lord Ashcroft — but the same survey hands Prime Minister Andy Burnham a clear lead over Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch on who would do a better job managing the economy.
Key Points
- Healey Budget poll voters worse off — voters thought the Budget would make them personally worse off by a 22-point margin, with 42% saying it would make no difference.
- The Budget was the most noticed recent political story, mentioned unprompted by more than half of respondents.
- Burnham and Healey lead Badenoch and her shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith by 12 points on managing the economy.
- Asked who would make the best prime minister, voters chose Burnham over Badenoch by 26 points, with Nigel Farage third on 14%.
The polling, published on Tuesday 10 November, asked voters what they made of Healey’s Budget — his first as Chancellor in the Burnham government — and found the measures people remembered most were the removal of standing charges on gas bills, tax rises, the £100 payment towards energy bills for those in Council Tax bands A to D, and the absence of cuts to welfare spending. The minimum wage increase, the reversal of planned changes to the cash ISA allowance announced by Rachel Reeves, and higher taxes on banks were most likely to be mentioned in Labour and Liberal Democrat territory.
The verdict on personal finances was blunt: voters thought the Budget would make them personally worse off by a 22-point margin. Yet the political damage appears limited. Voters said Burnham was doing a good job rather than a bad job by a 15-point margin, and Badenoch by a 3-point margin. More than three quarters of 2024 Labour voters preferred Burnham as prime minister, compared with 65% who preferred Keir Starmer in June.
A sharp turnaround on the economy
The economy numbers mark a turnaround from the spring. At the end of May, Badenoch and Mel Stride led Starmer and Reeves by 5 points on who would do a better job managing the economy. Now Burnham and Healey lead Badenoch and Griffith by 12 points — a 17-point swing in five months.
The backdrop is a difficult one for the Chancellor. At the IMF and World Bank meetings in mid-October, Healey committed to maintaining Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules, and the Budget contained a large number of smaller changes while decisions on spending cuts, particularly to welfare, were pushed into the new year. The Office for Budget Responsibility puts the Chancellor’s headroom at £15 billion by 2029/30 — enough to avoid immediate concern, but little room for unexpected costs. The OBR expects GDP to expand by 1.2% this year, but next year’s forecast has been cut to just 1%, down from 1.6%, and it raised its inflation forecasts to 3.1% this year and 3.4% in 2027.
What happens next
Voters overall were evenly divided between thinking Britain needed radical change or steady, stable management. On Europe, the poll found voters said joining the euro would be an unacceptable condition of EU membership by a 41-point margin — a warning for any future debate about rejoining. The government is bound by Starmer’s manifesto commitments, and Burnham’s more ambitious ideas remain some way from becoming policy. The spending review early in the new year, which is expected to include controversial welfare decisions, will be the next big test of whether the Budget’s cautious approach holds.
For background on the Budget itself, see our report on Chancellor John Healey presenting the first Burnham government Budget, and on the key updates from the first Labour government Budget in the UK. More in our Politics section.
Sources: Lord Ashcroft Polls, “How was the Budget, should we rejoin the EU (and under what conditions), and do we want steady management or radical change?”; Insight IFA, “Market Commentary November 2026”.