Britons' confidence in economy falls to lowest since at least 1978, Ipsos MORI poll shows

LONDON (Reuters) -Confidence among people in Britain about the economy over the next 12 months has fallen to the lowest on record, polling firm Ipsos MORI said on Sunday, with only a small number expecting improvement over the period.

Seventy-five percent of Britons expect the economy to get worse over the next 12 months, up 8 percentage points since March, Ipsos said.

Just 7% of Britons think the economy will improve over the next year, while 13% thought it would stay the same. The minus 68 net balance represented the lowest degree of optimism since Ipsos began collecting the data in 1978.

Confidence had already wilted among British businesses and consumers, and recent U.S. tariffs and concerns over the state of the UK economy have dragged pessimism to a low not seen since the recession of 1980, the financial crisis of 2008 and the COVID-related cost-of-living crisis, Ipsos said.

The net balance in terms of economic confidence reached minus 64 in all those periods, Ipsos said.

The findings are a blow to Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was elected last July with an ambition for Britain to become the fastest-growing economy in the Group of Seven.

"Pessimism about the economy (was) already up 30ppts compared with last June even before this month’s figures," Gideon Skinner, Ipsos' senior director of UK Politics.

"Few prime ministers have faced this level of economic pessimism at this stage in."

The British government, which oversees a relatively trade-intensive economy compared with other G20 countries, is seeking to avoid the U.S. reciprocal tariffs by negotiating a new economic deal with the United States.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Bernadette Baum)