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That may well explain why Mr. Osborne’s recent decision to impose a sales tax of 20 percent on pasties and other takeout snacks — while cutting the top income tax rate on financiers and other highly paid Britons — has created such a furor here.

The tax controversy, which the British press has called, inevitably, “Pasty-gate,” has come to symbolize the increasingly vitriolic debate in Britain over who should shoulder the burden of the government’s drive to cut debt and spending.

The tax has ignited a political firestorm, prompting even generally pro-government tabloid newspapers to attack it and leading the equally elegant British prime minister, David Cameron, to claim — not all that convincingly — that he, truly, is an aficionado of the pasty (which rhymes with nasty).

The issue has also revived memories of the poll tax and other unpopular measures imposed by previous Conservative Party-led governments that left many Britons feeling that their leaders were out of touch.

The new tax, announced last week as part of the government’s austerity budget, was aimed at closing a loophole that exempted hot, freshly baked takeout foods, like pasties, pies, toasted sandwiches and rotisserie chickens, from the point-of-sale tax known in Britain as the value-added tax. Under the new budget, which effectively becomes law immediately, the price of such items will henceforth include a value-added tax of 20 percent.

Until now, the coalition government led by Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party has made a strong case that, in light of a budget deficit of more than 10 percent of gross domestic product, Britain has no choice but to embark on one of the most severe austerity regimes in Europe.

Leading the charge has been Mr. Osborne, Mr. Cameron’s close friend and top political adviser, whose social pedigree in class-obsessed Britain is among the more refined in Parliament. An Oxford graduate, like Mr. Cameron, Mr. Osborne stands to inherit the title of baronet from his father.

As the economy continues to sag, Mr. Osborne’s clarion call that “we are all in this together” is beginning to ring hollow for a British public battered by high gasoline prices, a dormant job market and, now, more expensive pasties.

On Thursday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted that the British economy would experience its second consecutive quarter of contraction this spring, putting the economy back in a recession.

According to a YouGov poll that was released Thursday, Mr. Cameron’s government would get only 33 percent of the popular vote if an election were held now, compared with 43 percent for the opposition Labour Party. Mr. Cameron’s party won 36 percent of the vote in 2010. The next election must be held before May 7, 2015.

It has long been expected that the party in power would suffer political consequences as the public feels austerity’s bite. But Mr. Osborne has been betting that the prospect of economic recovery would be enough to convince voters that the current Conservative-led coalition government was better positioned than Labour to improve Britain’s parlous finances and make the economy more competitive on world markets.

That, in fact, was the stated impetus behind Mr. Osborne’s central budget measure: cutting the top tax rate to 45 percent from 50 percent. Many economists have supported such a rate cut as essential to attracting more investment and bolstering London’s claim to be world’s leading financial hub.

Mr. Osborne proposed to pay for the cut in part by increasing the fees that the wealthy pay when they buy and sell expensive properties in London.

Other revenue-raising measures, however, affected the middle class, including the scrapping of tax allowances for retirees — a change that was quickly labeled the granny tax — and the snack-food levy, perhaps forevermore known as the pasty tax.

Inflaming the debate is not only that the chancellor announced the tax, but how he has defended it.

At a parliamentary hearing Wednesday, Mr. Osborne was asked when he had last sampled a pasty at Greggs, a nationwide bakery chain that specializes in the delicacy.

The chancellor, who in public settings can come across as haughty in comparison with the more glib Mr. Cameron, scrambled for an appropriate response before acknowledging what, by then, had become obvious to all: he does not frequent the chain.

The British press, which delights in poking fun at the upper-class foibles of Mr. Osborne and Mr. Cameron, pounced. The Sun called on the government to reverse the pasty tax, and The Times published a list of Greggs outlets that it asserted would be most convenient for the busy chancellor to patronize.

At lunchtime Thursday at the closest shop on the Times list — less than a mile from Mr. Osborne’s residence in the Westminster area of central London — a line of civil servants, construction workers and others waited to pay 90 pence, or $1.43, for a sausage roll or £1.42 for a heartier steak bake.

Mike Henderson, a network engineer who calls himself a frequent Greggs customer, said he was not surprised that the chancellor was taking aim at low-budget snacks to raise money.

“This government does what it wants to do, and we have to follow,” he said. Using a popular nickname for the Conservatives, he added, “Don’t forget, these are the Tories. It’s history repeating itself.”

The dispute threatens to set back Mr. Cameron’s signature accomplishment as prime minister — detoxifying a political brand that in the post-Thatcher years had become closely linked with policies that favored the better-off.

Even if the bitterness over the pasty tax dissipates, the aftertaste of an out-of-touch government that looks out for its own could linger.

“We cannot all afford to pay £3 a day for a sandwich lunch,” Mr. Henderson said. “Here you can come in and get a cheese roll for 90 pence.”

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assistant: Tax on Britainâs Pasty Sets Up Class Warfare