The public have delivered a humiliating verdict on Rachel Reeves’ ability as Chancellor with a new poll revealing more people would trust Jeremy Corbyn to do the job. The survey found 51% of people believed Miss Reeves is doing a bad job in Number 11, with a only 27% thinking she is doing well.
Miss Reeves’ high tax Budgets, which raised £40 billion in 2024 and £30 billion in November and several high-profile policy U-turns could have added to public distrust in the 46-year-old Labour minister. In the run-up to her latest Budget the Chancellor was also embroiled in a row over whether she had lied to the public about the state of the nation’s finances, with the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer coming out to defend her.
Now in a poll of 2,000 adults, conducted by Merlin Strategy, people were given the choice of past and current political figures and asked if they did a good or a bad job running the economy.
Surprisingly 35% of people surveyed thought former Chancellor Gordon Brown did well in the role, despite him taking the controversial decision to sell off a significant proportion of the country’s gold reserves.
Trailing Mr Brown by just one percentage point, former Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak scored well with the public, perhaps boosted by his performance during the Covid pandemic where he introduced business bounce-back loans and the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme to support the hospitality sector.
Another former Conservative Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, also scored highly with a 28% score from some people who believed he had a firm grasp on the public purse.
Hard-left ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now the joint-founder of Your Party, makes an interesting appearance in the poll results with 29% of people thinking he would make a decent occupant of Number 11.
Mr Corbyn’s score put him two points ahead of Ms Reeves. However, Mr Corbyn proved a polarising figure, with 42% also saying he would do a bad job delivering the Budget.
Outside of Labour and the Conservatives, the highest scoring Reform UK politician was Zia Yusuf with 27%, beating his colleague Richard Tice who scored only 26%.
Corbyn-esq left wing Green Party leader Zak Polanski was given a 26% rating for doing a good economic job.
In the race to the bottom with those scoring highest for doing poorly as Chancellor, Ms Reeves had the worst rating (51%), followed by Mr Corbyn (42%) and Rishi Sunak, who despite receiving praise, also racked up a 34% negative rating.
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