The Times, 9 February 2010

The British are increasingly gloomy about the state of their country, the front page of The Times reveals today. According to a new poll, 70% of voters believe that Britain is “a broken country,” while 64% also feel that Britain “is going in the wrong direction”. With  60% “hardly recognise the country they are living in”, nearly half the respondents claimed that they “would emigrate if they could.” For The Times’ leader, this strain of deep pessimism is a crisis of trust – “First, the political class is discredited. The expenses scandal is central.” Also, the leader pursues, voters are cynical about capitalism and fear for their jobs, with 68% believing that “people who play by the rules always get a raw deal”. Many of these themes echo the Conservative party’s long-running claim that 13 years of Labour government have led to a “broken Britain.” However, the poll is not all bad news for Gordon Brown, with Labour up 2 points to 30% against its Tory rivals, which makes the prospect of a hung parliament increasingly likely in this year’s general election.