Neither Labour nor Tories trusted with economy, politics.co.uk poll shows

Neither Labour nor Tories trusted with economy, politics.co.uk poll shows

Friday, 29, Aug 2008 06:00

Neither Labour nor the Tories can be trusted withy the economy according to politics.co.uk users.

In a new poll released this morning, both Labour and the Conservative do as badly as each other on trustworthiness with the economy, with both parties receiving exactly the same results.

Only 21 per cent of users said they trusted either party with the economy.

The Liberal Democrats actually performed very slightly better, with 29 per cent of users saying they would trust them.

Respondents were more generous when assessing how responsible Labour was for the current state of the economy.

Only 14 per cent of people think Labour is totally responsible for the economy. Sixty-four per cent of people think Labour is somewhat responsible, and 21 per cent think it is not at all responsible.

General political assumptions about the prevalence of economic concerns on general elections are also brought into focus with some surprising results when users were asked how important economic concerns are to them.

Thirty-six per cent said economic issues are very important to them. A majority of users – 43 per cent – said the economy was quite important to them. Seven per cent said they were of average importance, and 14 per cent said they were quite unimportant.

The government is planning on launching a political fightback this September based almost exclusively on economic issues. Labour insiders think helping families out financially while fuel and food prices continue to sky-rocket is the key to improving their electoral performance.

Some analysts say Gordon Brown signed his political suicide note by the years of credit he took for the robust state of the economy, meaning he could not hide from responsibility when things went wrong.