Britain’s bandwidth
‘Bandwidth’ was one of the words of 2020. It became over-used in business and professional circles of course, but it was of its time, borrowed from a digital world we were increasingly living in and representing a cry for help. The pandemic crowded out other issues and worries but what about now? What are Britons worrying about? Is our bandwidth any wider?
Ever since the 1970s, Ipsos MORI interviewers have asked a representative sample of Britons to identify ‘the most important’ and ‘other important issues facing the country’. There have been no limits put on the number of issues respondents can mention and, crucially, no prompting either — that is, no-one is shown a list. This had made it a unique measure of what is top-of-mind. The only change to the longest time-series of its kind was a move to a telephone methodology forced by the suspension of face-to-face in-home interviewing last year.
At the time of the first UK-wide lockdown in April 2020, 85% of people mentioned Coronavirus. Its salience remained at 70% or higher up until Spring this year when the vaccination programme was in full swing and the Government introduced its Roadmap for unlocking society.
Over the same period, several other issues fell away in public consciousness. For example, the environment and climate change had been moving up the pecking order, more and more top-of-mind. The same happened for the issue of crime. Perhaps surprisingly, mentions of the NHS/health also fell, subsumed within the Coronavirus emergency.
The narrowing of Britain’s bandwidth was also evident in the average number of issues mentioned by respondents. This fell from 3.49 at the 2019 general election, to just 2.73 in November 2020. This may seem marginal, but this dip put the average at the lowest it had been since we started tracking this 10 years ago (for the record, it’s high-point was 4.14 in June 2017).
Things are changing. Last month, the average number of mentions was back at 3.40 and several issues seem to be returning including the environment, now mentioned by 21%, a little higher than its 2019 average. Some of these are pandemic-related; notably, the economy and education were more salient than they were in early 2020 (although worries about the economy seem to now be on a downward path).
This matters because politicians, brands and the media all want to engage people about the things that are important to them. It’s likely that their focus on certain issues is both cause and effect of what people say is important, and of course, a national worry might not translate into a local one (housing is a good example of this).
Britain’s bandwidth is not constant and liable to change. It has been buffeted by ‘black swan’ events, foreign conflicts and interventions, crises, political, economic and social realities (might COP26 have an impact later this year?), local and personal considerations.
Now, Coronavirus is much less salient than it was. In June, 56% identified it as among the most important issues facing the country, much lower than the 72% in February. But in a sign of the precarious situation, June’s measure was a seven-point rise on May’s.
Variants of concern, the ‘pingdemic’ and a rocky recovery may all further disrupt Britain’s bandwidth and what we worry about. Just as Covid will hang around as a virus, it’s likely to be a permanent fixture in our Issues Index for a while. What’s less clear is the length and strength of its stay.
