I hope this finds you well! In this week's newsletter:
How are Britons responding to a dramatic couple of weeks for the government? And what does this mean for perceptions of the Labour Party?
Are young people patriotic? A new insight from our polling of 16-17 year olds for the Sunday Times.
Our plans for party conference season: We’ve got a great set of events for the next few weeks, so find out where you can find us at the bottom of this email!
The attention economy
Throughout the summer, it often felt as if Reform UK was dominating the airwaves and social media, sometimes steering the debate.
Yet after a couple of busy weeks for the Government - and with a Labour deputy leadership election around the corner - all eyes have been on Number 10.
Last week, Reform UK held their biggest party conference to date, undoubtedly hoping to win the public’s attention with policy announcements and a couple of new faces. This was overshadowed by the Deputy Prime Minister’s resignation and a dramatic reshuffle.
Asked whether they had heard more about the party conference or the government’s reshuffle, seven in ten (69 per cent have heard more about Labour’s drama than Reform’s event. Only 12 per cent of the public - and just 25 per cent of Reform supporters - say they heard more about the party’s conference.
But it may be that ‘not all publicity is good publicity' for the government, with an increasing proportion of Britons saying they seem chaotic and divided. A record 77 per cent now describe the government as chaotic, the highest since we began tracking it shortly after the election, with even a majority of Labour’s own 2024 voters agreeing. More than half the country (55 per cent) say Labour looks divided, higher than say the same about Reform or the Conservatives.
These perceptions of chaos and division are clearly a problem for the Government in their own terms, and the Prime Minister’s net approval has fallen to minus 44, the lowest we have ever recorded. But there is a wider risk for the incumbents: the more this Government is seen as chaotic (on top of the last Government of a different persuasion that was also seen as chaotic), the more people start to conclude that it is the system itself that is at fault, rather than one party or another. That in turn de-risks more radical alternatives, whether Reform on the right or Your Party or the Greens on the left.
As we highlighted in ‘Shattered Britain’, a key fault line in British society is the extent to which people think that our institutions can be preserved but improved or if they all need to be burnt down. The greater the perception of political chaos and impotence in the current system, the more the public may be tempted to embrace a total overhaul and to roll the dice on something new.
Are young people patriotic?
As we discussed in last week’s newsletter, our polling of 16–17 year olds for The Sunday Times highlighted many differences between age groups. Today’s young Britons have come of age through a decade of political turmoil, the rise of social media, a pandemic, and a cost of living crisis. It’s no surprise they often feel like a distinct generation, with different politics and shifting values.
One very clear example of this is their view of the monarchy: while most adults support the Royal Family, just a quarter of teens would oppose abolition, and nearly half say they don’t really mind either way.
And yet interestingly, the polling also found that our next generation of adults might be even more patriotic than the wider public. Nearly half (49 per cent) of 16–17 year olds say they are proud to be British, compared to 45 per cent of adults. Just one in ten say they are ashamed to be British, slightly lower than among the wider public (15 per cent).
What’s interesting is that this pride is particularly strong among boys. A clear majority (57 per cent) of 16–17 year old boys say they are proud to be British, compared to 39 per cent of girls. This is a 19-point gender gap, larger than the 12-point gap found among adults.
So while younger Britons are more indifferent to institutions like the Royal Family, they are clearly as patriotic as the generations before them - patriotism might mean different things to different people.
Read the Sunday Times writeup of the research here:
We asked the public what time period they consider to be the golden days. The most popular answers were the 1980s (24 per cent) and 1990s (23 per cent).
There’s clearly an element of personal nostalgia in how Britons answer this question: while Millennials yearn for the 1990s, Gen X look back on the 80s fondly, while Baby Boomers and the Silent Gen tend to think the 1960s were the ‘good old days’.
However, notably it is Millennials and Gen Z who are most likely to look back beyond the 1960s: 8 per cent of these age groups believe that the ‘good old days’ mean a time before 1960, or before the 1900s, compared to just 3 per cent of Gen X and 4 per cent of Baby Boomers.
When we hear politicians hark back to a golden age in Britain's history, it’s clear the public are thinking of very different periods.
More in Common in the news
Last weekend, I wrote an op-ed for the Times, tracking changes in public opinion since the General Election, and what it means for the government when Britons see them as chaotic or unstable. You can read the article here:
And our conference agenda is just kicking off: we’ll be attending every party conference, and holding events at the Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour conferences in the coming weeks. You can find out more about our events programme here:
-1.png?upscale=true&width=588&upscale=true&name=The%20Opinion%20Brief%20(4)-1.png)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Parties%20United_Divided@2x%20(3).png)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=WEBSITE_Chaos1_Segment@2x%20(1).png)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=proud%2016-17%20year%20olds%20public@2x%20(4).png)
.png?upscale=true&width=1120&upscale=true&name=Favourite%20music%20by%20decade@2x%20(2).png)