Reliability and affordability: understanding the reasons for UK voters’ support for nationalisation and public control

This article explores UK public preferences on an illustrative progressive transport policy grounded in state ownership and control elicited within a complex and methodologically diverse series of surveys (1) n = 693; 2) n = 10; 3) n = 2200) of adult UK residents conducted in January 2024 in the run up to the UK General Election. We analyse survey 3 to show that levels of support for transport reform are high across parties and demographic groups, and increase further when voters are presented with narrative justifications adversarially co-produced with opponents – termed ‘haters’ – of the policy in survey 2. This is the first example of adversarial co-production being deployed in examination of transport policy. We find high levels of support for tax and spend, particularly where burdens are placed on wealth and business, significant impact of narratives, particularly on ‘haters’, and clear associations between risk of destitution and various other socioeconomic characteristics, health status and levels of support. Finally, we examine the characteristics of ‘haters’, finding that they are older, identify as right of centre, have higher socioeconomic status, lower perceived risk of destitution and evaluate the illustrative transport policy much more negatively than, in particular, progressive health reform. We then present Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) of the associations within the whole sample – to our knowledge, the first such analysis in the field of transport – and find moderately strong positive correlations with levels of support for key infrastructural policies. This study indicates support for greater state control of transport in the UK, in part because of belief that this will facilitate greater affordability, safety and reliability.