MORI - Blair less trusted than his European counterparts
Ipsos-MORI have started conducting quarterly comparative polls tracking social trends in six countries - the UK, USA, France, Spain, Germany and Italy. A couple of figures cropped up in various news items over the last week, but the first actual findings are published in a MORI report today.
The most reported figure was on people's confidence in their head of government's ability to tackle the problems facing the country. With a net confidence rating of minus 40% Tony Blair had the lowest rating of the 6 heads of government measured. His figure compares with minus 29% for Dominique de Villepin,
minus 27% for Silvio Berlusconi (the survey was conducted prior to the Italian elections), minus 24% for Jose Luis Zapatero, minus 18% for George Bush and minus 13% for Andrea Merkel.
British people also had comparatively little confidence in their government's ability to specific areas; UK respondents had the lowest confidence in their government to tackle terrorism, integration of immigrants into the community or crime of the 6 countries measured.
There are intersting contrasts between the problems people in the 6 countries surveyed consider to be the most worrying facing their country. Only 11% of respondents in Britain said they considered unemployment to be one of the three most worrying issues facing the country, compared to 54% of French respondents, 59% of Italian respondents and 71% of German respondents. This shouldn't be particularly surprising - not only does Britain have a low unemployment rate compared to the other European countries, but MORI's questions on economic optimism also show that British people are most optimistic about their countries's economic performance and their own family's financial situation than respondents in other countries.
Britain is also the country where fewest people consider poverty to be a worrying issue - although not by such startling margins. 22% of British respondents named poverty as one of the three most worrying issues compared to 39% of Germans and 38% of French respondents. Britain was also the country with the lowest concern over "political scandal and corruption" - only 14%. The highest figures were 21% in Italy (again, remember this was when Berlusconi was still in power) and 27% in the USA (where the Jack Abramoff scandal would still have been fresh in people's minds).
British people were comparatively more concerned about the environment (23%) and crime (47%)- where Britain had the highest number of people saying it was one of the three most worrying issues. Britain also had one of the higher proportions of people saying they were worried about health and education. On terrorism there were distinct trends - Spanish respondents were most likely to worry about terrorism with 58% citing it as one of the three most worrying issues (the survey was conducted prior to ETA's March ceasefire), then came Italy, the UK and the USA onm 40%, 39% and 37%. Respondents in Germany and France, neither of who m have contributed troops to the coalition in Iraq, were the least likely to be worried about terrorism with only 23% and 21% saying they were worried about it.
It is obviously verging on the impossible to devise a normal voting intention question that can apply to the political and party systems in all six countries covered - MORI's best attempt is to ask
"If there were to be a general election next week, and assuming that only one of the two main parties could win enough seats to form a government, which one of them would you prefer to see win?" "The party in power" or the "Opposition party". No doubt you can imagine the problems a question like this presents (think of Germany for a start - where the main alternative to the CDU/CSU is their coalition partner rather than an opposition party). For the record though, in the UK the government had a 4 point deficit (37% to 41%), the same defecit as in Italy (the survey was conducted when Berlusconi was still in power).
Spain and Germany's governments both had an 8 point lead, France had a 3 point lead and the USA had a 15 point defecit.
While not part of MORI's own study, the report also includes some data from a Eurobarometer back in 2001 asking people about the cause of poverty which I found interesting. Among the countries that then made up the EU, people in the UK were the second most likely to blame poverty on laziness (23% agreed - only Portugal was higher) and was the second least likely to blame poverty on injustice (20% agreed, compared to 40% in France and 42% in Sweden).
