Who is winning the blame game on local council cuts?
| Who is mostly to blame for cuts to local council services? (YouGov) | All sampled | CON voters % | LAB voters % | LD voters % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local councils for not cutting their wasteful spending | 27 | 57 | 9 | 37 |
| Central government for reducing local council’s funding | 29 | 9 | 49 | 21 |
| Both equally | 37 | 30 | 38 | 35 |
Should the coalition be relieved by these numbers?
Hardly a day goes by at the moment without the local council cuts stories. For much of the burden of implementing the tightening of the belts is in the hands of local authorities many of who have seen their central government grants reduced.
So the above YouGov question is one we’ll be looking at quite a lot in the run-up to the May 5th elections.
Given that this is from the poll that had Labour with a 10 point lead then the findings could have been much worse for the coalition. The gap is very narrow indeed and even then more people were saying “both equally”.
What’s been striking is how the government’s PR operation has been handling this. The dictat about bigger salaries being published has kept the focus on the “fat cats” and not always on the bigger picture.