By Mark Smulian | 2 July 2014
The austerity that followed the recession only hastened a crisis in public finances that would have happened anyway, polling expert Peter Kellner told the CIPFA conference.
Kellner, managing director of polling firm YouGov, said that growing demand for public services – in particular health and social care – and reluctance to increase the tax burden meant ‘the austerity years made the challenges more urgent but you would have faced them anyway’.
He said services spending had been sustained over decades as more people had paid tax on rising incomes and as defence spending had fallen, but neither of these trends could meet the demands made long term.
‘Tuition fees are now unlikely to be reversed but are an example of where people start paying fees for bits of things the government previously provided for free, and I think you will see more of that,’ Kellner said.
‘I also think the “escalator” for entitlement to retirement pensions will go up faster than we have been told,’ he said, with eligibility coming at progressively older ages levels.
Looking to the coming general election, Kellner said most polls had a narrow Labour lead but pointed out that historically governments had gained support in the run-up to elections as voters not fully engaged in politics began to make a choice about the administration they wanted.
‘This time there will be two completely new phenomena,’ he said. ‘One is that we have a coalition government so the Liberal Democrats no longer attract the protest vote.
‘The other is that Ukip for the first time means the Conservatives have a party to the right of them that is not toxic.’
Kellner explained that far-right parties such as the British National Party and National Front had been ‘toxic’ with very limited electoral appeal, but that this did not apply to Ukip.
‘Ukip is not toxic and about half its vote came from the Conservatives and they were plainly the party most damaged by Ukip support in the European elections. It all depends how much of that vote the Conservatives win back at a general election,' he said.
Kellner said he expected the Conservatives would emerge the largest party at the next general election and would then prefer to try to run a minority government rather than enter another coalition with the Liberal Democrats, or anyone else.
'They can be fairly confident the Democratic Unionist Party would support them when it mattered on confidence and supply, and the simple career ambition of Tory MPs means they would prefer minority government to having 18 ministerial and whip positions held by LibDems.'
Kellner said that were this to happen, the referendum promised by the Conservatives in 2017 on European Union membership would then go ahead.
'Our polling at the moment shows it too close to call on staying in the EU or leaving,' he said.
'But If David Cameron were to come back with terms he said safeguarded Britain’s position then it becomes 2:1 for staying in, which is remarkably close to what happened in the 1975 referendum,' he added.
