THE attempt by the prime minister to portray David Cameron’s Tories as the party of the wealthy and privileged has resonance with voters, a Sunday Times-YouGov poll has found.

Last week Gordon Brown accused Cameron of having a tax policy “dreamt up on the playing fields of Eton”, referring to Tory plans to raise the inheritance tax threshold to £1m and last week’s Sunday Times revelation that Zac Goldsmith, a party candidate, is a “non-dom” taxpayer.

The poll of more than 2,000 people shows that 52% think the Conservatives are still the party of the rich, against 31% who do not. Nine out of 10 Labour supporters and more than 72% of Liberal Democrat voters believe the party is still biased towards the better-off, against 14% of those who support the Tories.

People in the north and in Scotland, where the Conservatives are weakest, are most likely to see the party as favouring the rich.

Voters were more evenly split when asked whether Cameron was “too wealthy and privileged to represent ordinary people”. While 47% agreed with this statement, 44% did not. The Tories previously believed that Labour had given up on this line of attack when a campaign to persuade voters in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election 18 months ago backfired.

Despite this the Tories remain in a 13-point poll lead, only slightly down on the 14-point gap a month ago. Their rating has slipped from 41% to 40% over the past month while Labour is steady on 27%, the Liberal Democrats unchanged at 18% and other parties up one at 15%.

The poll also shows that, possibly as a result of a backlash against bankers and their bonuses, people are unsympathetic to the idea of sparing further tax rises for the highly paid because of claims that it would undermine enterprise and incentives for wealth creation.

A clear majority, 66%, think further tax rises should be concentrated on the highly paid, on top of the planned increase in the highest rate of tax to 50% on salaries above £150,000. Only 25% believe tax rises should be spread across the whole population.

The Conservatives have proposed increasing incentives for marriage in the tax and benefits system, possibly by reintroducing a version of the former married couple’s allowance. Nearly half of people, 48%, back this policy, against 43% who do not think the system should discriminate further in favour of marriage.More than two-thirds of Tory supporters favour the policy.

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