Ed Jacobs, the Guardian Northerner's political commentor, looks at polls which suggest that George Osborne may need something stronger than the water he sipped during his speech last year
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Gladstone downed sherry with beaten egg when things were rough financially in Victorian times
Next Wednesday, just a little after 12.30pm, the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will step up to the dispatch box in the House of Commons to deliver a make-or-break budget.
The historical precedent of Chancellors being allowed to sip a drink throughout the speech (Gladstone had sherry with beaten egg, Ken Clarke whisky) will prove all too ironic giving the sobering news to be delivered. And the run up to this year's set-piece financial and economic statement has also been a classic study of the hardships of coalition government, with George Osborne having to tread a difficult path, leaving few on either side of the Government's backbenches happy.
The right wing, exemplified this week by the former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, calls ever more loudly for a radical package including an end to the ring-fencing of 'sacred' budgets such as those of the NHS and overseas aid; freezing spending at current levels for three years; and a temporary period of 0% Capital Gains Tax.
On Osborne's left flank rides St Vince of Cable as the Liberal Democrat grassroots affectionately think of him, using an article in Labour's house magazine, the New Statesman to suggest in unsubtle terms a radical change of course. The balance of risks, he argues, may have changed so much that increased borrowing to invest in new infrastructure to restart growth could now be less perilous that the relentless pursuit of deficit reduction above all else.
Fearful of the consequences of tacking to the extreme in either direction, the Treasury finds itself caught in the crossfire between the two sides, stuck with a scale of investment in infrastructure that is having little impact, and able only to reach for limited tax cuts, well below the changes that many Conservatives now seek.
Spend a few, please. In the north. Photograph: Steven May /Alamy For a Chancellor as politically-minded as George Osborne, the backbench and frontbench 'advice' falls second to achieving all-important public support, not just as a cover to carry on, but as potential votes in those all-important marginal seats in northern England that will decide the 2015 General Election. One look, however, at the recent plethora of polls makes depressing reading for the Government and the Conservatives in particular as we head towards Budget Day.
Emerging from them is a palpable sense that the north has rejected the Government's economic strategy and concluded that faith in deficit reduction above all is else is proving unjustified and self-defeating.
Research conducted by the pollsters Opinium for the Observer over the weekend showed that in the North's three regions, 66% of the population feel that the Government's economic strategy has proved to be harmful to the country's interests, against a mere 14% who believe it is working. The figures are supported by ITV News's index carried out by ComRes which has 62% of the north convinced by Labour's mantra that the Government are cutting too much and too quickly.
To make matters worse, despite employment figures being one of those rare policy areas where Ministers do appear to be succeeding, northern voters are refusing them the benefit of the doubt. The polling for the Observer points to 76% of people believing that the Government is making little or no progress in tackling unemployment, a dangerous sign of voters simply giving up listening to Ministers, whatever the figures might show.
Yet, in a sign of the 'plague on all their houses' thinking which seems currently widespread, northern England still sees the Government's approach as marginally better than what Labour has to offer. Polling by the former Conservative Party treasurer turned pollster, Lord Ashcroft, in northern marginals finds that 43% of voters believe that Labour has not yet learned the right lessons from their period of office, and subsequently cannot yet be trusted to run the country. This compares to the 27% who believe that Labour is ready to govern again.
Asked which party they most trust to steer the British economy out of its present trouble, Labour on 28% continue to trail the Conservatives on 30% although a sizable 38% of those polled in the north for Ashcroft didn't know whom they can trust. Similarly, while 44% believe that if David Cameron is re-elected as Prime Minister with a Conservative Government in 2015, public debt and borrowing will increase, 51% believe the same about an Ed Miliband Government. There is much to play for.
With Lord Ashcroft's polling showing that only 17% of voters think the economy will get stronger under either Cameron or Miliband, it is clear that northern England is fast losing confidence in all sides of the political spectrum to bring the country back to economic health. Next Wednesday the Chancellor has the opportunity to address this political and economic crisis of confidence felt by voters up here. The north awaits but does not expect too much. Ed Jacobs is a political consultant at the Leeds based Public Affairs Company and devolution correspondent for the centre-left political and policy blog, Left Foot Forward.