The Guardian view on British attitudes: a nation of possibilities
The problem with modern Britain, said Liz Truss in a recent interview, is that it remains in thrall to social democratic ideas ushered in by New Labour in 1997 and which the Conservatives have not been bold enough in combatting or reversing. This will have been news to much of the public, particularly those who remember the long years of Conservative austerity after 2010 and the Tory party’s self-expulsion of Britain from the European Union after 2016. Neither of these dominant events of the last 13 years was a flagship social democratic policy last time we looked.
Yet Ms Truss is almost right in one respect. The British public has been moving slowly and steadily in a more social democratic direction in recent years. The publication this week of the 40th annual British Social Attitudes survey provides some of the evidence. It reveals, for instance, that the public does not only want government to fund health care and pensions, it also wants it to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor. The public supports further increases in taxes and spending in order to fund public services too, in spite of the fact that taxes are already high by historic standards.
These are significant findings. As the blogger Sam Freedman pointed out this week, they result from observable, real world changes like the growth of food bank poverty, not some elite conspiracy. The implications for Labour are therefore encouraging. They suggest that there is some space for a new government to tax and spend more in pursuit of some of its priorities. Parts of the net zero agenda that has dominated the news in the last few days are an obvious example. But this will only be the case as long as the public agrees with the priority and trusts the government to spend wisely and fairly.
Attitude surveys always need to be invoked with care. They do not provide governments with a carte blanche. Although majorities identify with the more progressive views quoted above, this is not a consensus. On most measures, at least a third of the public (and often more) takes a different view. And what goes up can come down. While the general shift in opinion under the Tories has been in this more social democratic direction, history suggests that this goes into reverse when Labour
is in power. Public attitudes are not dogmatic.
Some similar light and shade applies in the BSA’s findings on the growth of liberal views. Attitudes to transgender people have hardened in the past three years, but overall public acceptance of nontraditional family forms and sexual relationships has moved a long way over 40 years. Today, 67% think a sexual relationship between two people of the same sex is never wrong; back in 1983 the figure was 17%. Support for a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion has risen from 37% in 1983 to 76% today.
None of this implies for a moment that there are not still battles to fight, and arguments to be won, or that any of these things will happen on their own, without human courage and political campaigning. On the contrary.
Yet the attitudes survey tells a better story about this country than, understandably, the ones we so often have to face. It reminds us this is still a nation rich in possibilities. A better Britain is in front of us, if we choose.