Budget 2012: George Osborne must learn to carry the country with him George Osborne produced a Budget last week that did many of the things that needed to be done. He ended the 50p tax rate on higher earners, which Gordon Brown imposed as an act of political spite rather than for any sound economic reason. Mr Osborne predicts that by reducing the top rate by 5p, he will significantly increase the state's revenue, and almost all reputable economists agree with him. He reduced corporation tax by 1p, a much needed gesture in support of businesses that are still having to cope with slow trading conditions. Most importantly of all, by raising the personal allowance by £3,580, he has taken about a million people out of income tax altogether. The measures he has taken to restore the country's finances to health are, inevitably, more controversial. As Elizabeth I noted, "to tax and to be loved is not given to man" - and it is certainly not given to a Tory Chancellor. Mr Osborne's changes to pensioners" allowances will raise over £1 billion, but already they have been labelled as a heartless "granny tax," and condemned for penalising people who have acted as Conservatives believe they should: they have saved all their lives, paid their taxes and, until they retired, have never taken money from the state. The results of our poll clearly show that the Chancellor has failed to convince the public of the merits of his Budget. The Conservatives have dropped two points and now trail Labour by one point as the party the electorate is most likely to vote for at the next general election. The Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives" Coalition partners, have also slipped by two points - in spite of their aggressive leaking of some of the main points of the Budget which Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, had agreed with Mr Osborne and the Prime Minister. If the purpose of the leaks was to improve the standing of the Lib Dems, it did not work. Only 13 per cent of voters support the Lib Dems after the Budget. The Conservatives, however, have no grounds for complacency, just because the Lib Dems are faring even worse than they are. Mr Osborne has made a difficult situation worse by what has appeared to be a fundamental lack of fellow feeling for the people who will pay most for the changes that the Budget has introduced. It is true that more people on low incomes will escape tax, and those on incomes of over £150,000 a year will also gain. But the group that will really feel the squeeze are middle income pensioners, who now find their tax allowance frozen. The Chancellor made no effort to prepare the country for this particular change. He can hardly complain now if it has met with hostility. Mr Osborne has not shown himself to be alive to the concerns of the people who will feel the sharp edge of his fiscal changes, such as families with one earner who now find themselves being drawn into the 40p band. It is surely wrong that the number of people paying tax at this higher rate will soon be five million. Likewise, the Chancellor's behaviour in the week prior to the Budget does not suggest that he was weighed down with concern for those who would be adversely affected by his measures. Rather than continue to work on his statement, he left Britain to join the Prime Minister in the United States - giving an unfortunate impression of casual over-confidence. His characterisation of the pension changes, the day after the Budget, as merely an exercise in "simplification" sounded condescending, and added to a sense that he did not grasp the hardship the changes will inflict. We do not accept the predictable Left-wing criticism that Mr Osborne, as a scion of privilege, is incapable of appreciating the hardships of less fortunate citizens. It may be, however, that because of his privileged background he needs to work doubly hard to persuade ordinary people that he understands their struggles. Otherwise he and his fellow Tories will fail to win the public's confidence and, crucially, they may fail to persuade the country to support the sacrifices that need to be made by all, if Britain is to recover.