More than half the population, probably. Also, for the last few years the UK media have been doing something obnoxious where they take decisions where all options have some downside and present only the downsides of whatever the government has chosen, making it sound like the obvious wrong choice and something only a complete incompetent would pick - which is particularly obvious when the government does a u-turn and suddenly everyone discovers the problems with whatever they'd been presenting as the obvious right choice. The BBC is a particularly consistent offender. This of course makes it seem to everyone who follows the news like they could easily do better than the idiots in power.
One example HN might be familiar with is the smartphone-based Covid contact tracing app in this country. When the government was going with an app that didn't use Google and Apple's contact tracing framework, the BBC focused hard on the inherent problems with not using it and made it sound like no-one other than the government thought that decision had any advantages at all. Then the government U-turned and literally they day the new app launched, all of that was forgotten and the BBC suddenly discovered the fundamental, well-documented disadvantages of that framework they'd ignored before and found some experts who made it sound like that was worse than the original app. They've been doing it with almost everything though.
Well, one might reasonably assume that the government has the means and motive to put forward their side of the case. Selling policy is kind of the main job of a politician, after all, and the government has a considerably large megaphone to do it with.
One example HN might be familiar with is the smartphone-based Covid contact tracing app in this country. When the government was going with an app that didn't use Google and Apple's contact tracing framework, the BBC focused hard on the inherent problems with not using it and made it sound like no-one other than the government thought that decision had any advantages at all. Then the government U-turned and literally they day the new app launched, all of that was forgotten and the BBC suddenly discovered the fundamental, well-documented disadvantages of that framework they'd ignored before and found some experts who made it sound like that was worse than the original app. They've been doing it with almost everything though.