UK voters back the police rather than British Prime Minister David Cameron over the handling of riots, according to a Guardian/ICM poll. It shows that under a third of voters think Cameron has done a good job — while overall trust in the police’s fairness remains strong.
The poll, carried out online this week as politicians and the police became increasingly critical of each other’s performance, suggests neither Cameron nor the London Mayor Boris Johnson have impressed the public with their response.
Only 30 percent said Cameron has done a good job, against 44 percent who said the opposite, a net score of negative-14. For Johnson, the figures are 28 percent good job and 38 percent bad, a negative of 10 points. By contrast, 45 percent think that the acting commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, Tim Godwin, has done well against 27 percent who said the opposite — a positive score of 18.
Another online poll conducted this week by YouGov found similar levels of support for the police response over that of politicians. There is some evidence — on a smaller and therefore less precise sub-sample — that Londoners judge Johnson less harshly than the rest of the country. In the capital, his net negative score is only negative-3.
Despite the scale of the rioting and accusations that the police mishandled the initial disorder in Tottenham, north London, public trust in the police seems uniformly strong.
Overall, 61 percent of those polled said they are confident that the police enforce the law fairly, uniformly and without prejudice.
By contrast, a total of 36 percent said they are either not at all (10 percent) or not very (26 percent) confident. There is some evidence that younger or poorer people are less likely to trust the police than older or better-off people, but in all categories a majority are satisfied.
However, the public are far less confident about the police’s ability to keep order. A majority said they think the police lack sufficient resources. The finding could add to opposition to proposed cuts in police numbers and funding.
While 41 percent said they are either very (6 percent) or quite (35 percent) confident the police have been given adequate resources, 56 percent said the opposite. People on lower incomes are the most likely to think the police are under-resourced.
There is also widespread agreement about the main causes of the riots and looting.
Asked to pick from a list of possible reasons, 45 percent blamed criminality on the part of the rioters. Older voters and richer ones are most likely to lay the blame on this.
Of other possible reasons, 28 percent cited lack of respect within families and communities. Only 8 percent said they think a lack of jobs for young people is the main reason. A further 5 percent said the police shooting of Mark Duggan — which led to the initial disorder in Tottenham — was the main cause, while 4 percent blamed the coalition government, 2 percent blamed the police and 2 percent blamed the state of the economy.
At the bottom of the list, only 1 percent blamed racial tension — a finding that suggests that the public views these riots differently to those of the 1980s.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion