Polling shows that voters in our three regions are starting to blame the coalition for the UK's economic woes, rather than its Labour predecessors. Ed Jacobs sees that weighing with northern MPs in the Budget vote tonight
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Beleaguered. The Chancellor's constituency office in Tatton where Greenpeace protesters found locals sympathetic this month, and starting to grow impatient with coalition strategy. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Budgets are notorious for instant reactions, with the devils - or occasionally angels - proving only later to lie in the detail. Have MPs had long enough to squirrel such details out by the time they vote on George Osborne's package in the Commons tonight?
The debate will be a guide but it is not one into which the Chancellor's troops will march with much enthusiasm, especially those of them from northern constituencies which are so pivotal to the result of the next General Election.
They take local soundings; and so do the pollsters. The findings of the latter are discouraging according to the first comprehensive survey since Osborne opened his red box. Approaching half - 42 percent- of voters in the north believe that the budget will make no difference to the state of the economy according to YouGov's poll for the Sunday Times which was published over the weekend.
This also found a lonely 16% of respondents who reckoned that the Budget would be good for the economy compared to 29% who said that it would be bad. In personal terms, which ride high in the minds of electors in the privacy of the polling booth, just nine percent foresaw the measures improving their circumstances while 34 percent thought that they would be worse off.
Penny off a pint is not enough to cheer voters either. Photograph: Alamy This was in spite of Osborne's belief that his budget was "for people who aspire to work hard and get on" and indeed of his concession of a penny off the price of a pint of beer for those who aspire to drown their economic sorrows in the pub. Raising the personal tax allowance to £10,000 and giving mortgage guarantees also failed to shift the 48 percent of YouGov respondents who concluded that the coalition's current strategy for strengthening the economy and bringing public finances back into balance long term is not working and is unlikely to work, ever.
Setting their faces against all that the Chancellor has argued, 44% of Northern voters believe that the Government should change its strategy to concentrate on growth, even if this means that the deficit lasts longer or even gets worse. This compared with the 28% who support the Government's strategy as it stands. And crucially for the major parties' election planners, the highest share of respondents in the whole poll - 58 percent - blame the coalition for the country's economic problems, compared with 53% who blame Labour.
One last twist. Just over half of respondents - 51 percent - want to add just very slightly to the current employment figures. They only have one candidate for the dole queue in mind: George Osborne. The Chancellor acknowledged on taking office that his measures would not bring popularity with them but he had in mind a future day when he and his colleagues would be admired for scorning populism and sticking to their last. That day looks as far away in this chilly Spring of 2013 as it did in the bright May days of 2010.
Ed Jacobs is a political consultant at the Leeds based Public Affairs Company and devolution correspondent for the centre-left political and policy blog, Left Foot Forward.
