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A clear majority of Labour voters believe welfare spending is more important than boosting the UK defence budget, according to new polling, highlighting the political challenge facing Sir Keir Starmer as he makes the case for rearmament.
The exclusive polling conducted ahead of Wednesday’s Spring Statement also revealed that voters of all parties thought the government could increase spending while cutting taxes.
Although voters accepted there was a limit to the government’s ability to increase borrowing, the survey conducted jointly by Stonehaven and Public First showed they did not accept that trade-offs were required to re-arm.
Where should the money come from?
The survey also demonstrated that Starmer had already pulled two of the four main levers — cutting overseas aid and increasing taxes on businesses — that a majority of voters deemed acceptable to pay for higher defence spending.
The two other areas that voters agreed could be cut to boost the defence budget were investment in renewable energy and public transport — two policies that chancellor Rachel Reeves has said are fundamental to Labour’s plans for reviving the economy.
In recent weeks, Labour has been riven by internal divisions over Starmer’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by cutting the overseas aid budget while also announcing measures to cut the UK’s spiralling annual welfare bill by £5bn a year.
Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said the public’s “cake-and-eat-it” approach on tax and spending issues created a big problem for the government, particularly as it imposed increasingly tough spending cuts across Whitehall.
“The fact the public does believe in the ‘magic money tree’ is a boon for opposition — who can invoke it all the time when the government imposes cuts — but it’s a millstone for the government that is forced to admit that trade-offs do exist.”
Starmer told BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday that he hoped that greater use of AI and technology would enable the government to find savings, which would free up fiscal space for Labour’s priorities.
The prime minister said his government had made “record investments” in last year’s Budget with more money coming into the National Health Service.
“But . . . one of the areas that we will be looking at is, can we run the government more efficiently? Can we take some money out of government? And I think we can,” he said.
“I think we’re essentially asking businesses across the country to be more efficient, to look at AI and tech in the way that they do their business. I want the same challenge in government, which is, why shouldn’t we be more efficient?”
Stonehaven chair Peter Lyburn said that the polling showed public sentiment was lagging behind that of politicians and business leaders currently proclaiming a “renewal moment” for Europe.
“Investors and governments who think that moment has come must understand where voters are, otherwise those in a hurry to re-arm or build energy and transport infrastructure may well come unstuck,” he added.
A pivot to Europe?
The polling, conducted between March 11 and 15, also showed sentiments apparently hardening towards the US.
It found that more than a third of UK voters would favour the EU as a supplier of weaponry, compared with less than a quarter of the electorate saying America was a preferable partner.
In a potential sign of rapidly shifting views on the value of the transatlantic alliance, UK voters were also strongly in favour of “cross-European armed forces” despite years of Conservative and rightwing warnings against the emergence of a “Euro army”.
Notably, France was seen as more likely than the US to provide military aid in the event the UK was attacked by a terrorist group — despite America’s long-standing defence ties with the UK, including underwriting the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
The Trump trap?
The political debate in the UK over whether to spend more on defence and align with the US or the EU splits clearly along party lines, with Conservative and Reform voters favouring sticking close to Washington.
But while Starmer has tried to walk a diplomatic tightrope with the Trump administration over how to bring peace to Ukraine and avoid a trade war, voters of all parties hold a net negative view of US President Donald Trump.
Even among Reform voters, whose leader Nigel Farage is a vocal supporter of Trump, less than half said they had a positive view of the US president, compared with a third of Conservatives and a quarter of Labour voters.
Ford of Manchester university said that voters’ generally low opinion of Trump presented political risks for Farage and Conservatives who have aligned themselves with the Republican Maga movement in the US.
“The problem is that their attachment to Trump is not shared by a majority of their voters, or more importantly, the voters they are trying to win over from other parties. Trump-hugging is a way for both Conservative and Reform to shrink their vote.”
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