General Election 2017: designers set to vote Labour

The majority of designers will be voting Labour in next month’s general election, a Design Week poll shows.

46% intend to vote Labour

The poll launched by Design Week in April, which garnered 574 votes in total, shows that nearly half – 46% – intend to vote red in the election taking place on 8 June.

Conservative voters followed at 18%, while 14% chose Liberal Democrats and 6% The Green Party. One tenth of designers, at 11%, are currently undecided on who to vote for.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) was the party of choice for 2% of readers, while the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Welsh party Plaid Cymru gathered only 1%, and 2% said they would not be voting at all.

Design Week launched its poll after prime minister Theresa May announced in April that she would be holding a snap general election in June.

Conservatives ahead in opinion polls

The move aims to secure the Conservatives’ place in Government, as the party is currently ahead of Labour in public opinion polls. YouGov’s most recent figures show 44% of the public intend to vote Conservative, while 31% intend to vote Labour.

Corbyn pledges to fund arts

Political parties are yet to launch their general election manifestos, but Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pledged last year that his leadership would see greater investment in arts and culture.

This includes reversal of the £42.8 million cuts recently made to organisations such as the Arts Councils of England and Wales and Creative Scotland, additional funding to creative education and extracurricular activities in schools, de-privatising museums, devolution of cultural budgets to local councils and a national scheme for arts scholarships.

May focuses on STEM subjects

The Conservatives have focused more on digital, technology and science sectors in recent years.

Culture secretary Karen Bradley launched a digital strategy in March, which looks to encourage young people to code, while prime minister May’s industrial strategy launched in January focuses on developing the public’s science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills, alongside digital skills and numeracy.

Brexit could see drop in EU creative workers

May’s proposed Brexit plan is also set to take the UK out of the free single market and introduce stricter curbs on immigration and the free movement of people, which could see the 6% of creative industry jobs currently taken up by EU workers fall, and trade between the UK and European design industries reduced.

Creative Industries Federation launch manifesto

Creative Industries Federation chief executive John Kampfner has previously warned that the Conservatives’ “focus on tech and science as the drivers of innovation risks opportunities being missed.”

The Federation launched its own 10-point manifesto for the creative industries last week, which it hopes will encourage political parties to consider arts and culture when putting together their pledges.

The UK general election will take place on 8 June.