Half of workers fear for their jobs

Despite slightly increased optimism about the UK's prospects, the Ipsos Mori survey found 49% were now worried the recession would force them out of their jobs over the next year.

And Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared to be the target for blame - with his personal popularity plunging and the Tories gaining 10 points on Labour in just a month to lead by 14 points.

Mr Brown on Monday launched another desperate attempt to shore up the economy, gambling potentially hundreds of billions of pounds in an attempt to kick-start lending.

He and Chancellor Alistair Darling announced a fresh raft of measures designed to restore confidence in the banking sector and unblock the flow of credit.

They included taxpayer-backed insurance against expected "toxic" debts, powers for the Bank of England to buy up to £50 billion of "high-quality" assets from banks and other financial institutions to improve liquidity and increasing the Government's stake in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to nearly 70% from 58%.

Shares in RBS collapsed after it admitted it faced a £28 billion loss - the biggest in British corporate history - because of estimated bad debts and write-downs on the value of past acquisitions.

Mr Brown voiced anger at the losses, which he blamed on "clearly wrong" investments, amid speculation the bank, whose shares closed down 67%, may require a full-scale nationalisation. Lloyds Banking Group suffered a 34% fall and Barclays and HSBC finished off 10% and 6% respectively and London's FTSE 100 Index slumped more than 2% at one stage as the market gave a poor reception to the rescue plan.

The Prime Minister was forced to insist there would be no "blank cheque" for the banks under plans to insure them against potential losses from "toxic" assets. But he was unable to specify how many more billions the taxpayer would be asked to underwrite, saying the scale of the guarantees was yet to be negotiated with individual banks.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the latest package was "the clearest possible admission that the first bailout of the banks has failed and now they have no option but to attempt a second bailout - a bailout whose size we still don't know, whose details remain a mystery and whose ultimate cost to the people of Britain will only be known when this government has long gone."