A recent opinion poll conducted in six European countries has shown that both understanding and approval of Citizen’s Basic Income are increasing rapidly, with 63 per cent of polled individuals being familiar with the idea of a Citizen’s Basic Income (up 5 per cent on a year previously), and 68 per cent of the sample saying that they would vote for it (up 4 per cent on the previous year) (The EU’s growing support for Basic Income, Berlin: Dalia Research, 2017).
The UK was not one of the countries in which the survey took place, but even if the results were somewhat lower in the UK, which presumably they might be, we can no longer assume that ‘most people’ think unconditional benefits to be ‘unfair’.