BLEAK, worrying, f***ed. The words Brits would use to describe the year ahead do not paint a rosy picture for the UK.
And, new polling has shown, just one per cent of the UK public say they are “completely confident” in the Tory government to handle the cost of living crisis which is making the outlook so dire.
In contrast, a massive 70% of people said they were “not confident at all” that Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives would be able to reduce the cost of living in 2023.
The survey, run by People’s Polling for GB News, gave respondents four positive answers to choose from in that question but only one negative – completely, fairly, somewhat, and slightly confident against not confident at all.
In total, less than one in five people (18%) opted for a positive answer.
Asked if they thought their family would be better or worse off in 2023 than they had been during 2022, a significant majority (60%) of people said they thought next year would be harder.
In contrast, just 6% of respondents said they believed they would be better off financially in 2023.
People’s Polling also asked the survey’s 1169 respondents which word or phrase came to mind when they thought about the year ahead.
The most popular, said 51 times, was “difficult”. “Tough” was said 49 times, and “challenging” 42. The words bleak, worrying, uncertain, f***ed, s**t, hard, and expensive made up the top 10.
The polling also suggested that a few people might have laid their hopes elsewhere, as three respondents said 2023 would hold "independence".
Overall though, people’s perceptions of the year may go some way to explaining the poll’s other key finding, that the Tories are staring down the barrel of a crippling General Election defeat.
Sunak’s party polled at just 19%, down three points on where they had been in People Polling’s survey of the week prior.
Keir Starmer’s Labour continued to poll well across the UK, recording support at 45%. However, the polling has suggested that Reform UK – which was founded as The Brexit Party by Nigel Farage and is now led by Richard Tice – would also benefit from the Tories’ collapse.
Tice’s party would get 8% of the UK-wide vote at a General Election, the polling suggested, putting them equal with the LibDems. The Greens would edge out both of those two parties to win 9% of the vote.
The SNP polled at 6% – and 62% in the unrepresentative Scotland subsample – but it is difficult to gauge their support on a UK-wide poll.
