YouGov on Britain and Libya

The full tables for the YouGov Sunday Times poll are now available here.

The biggest chnk of questions were about Libya. 54% of people think that the government have responded badly to the situation in Libya, 59% think they have performed badly in protecting the safety of British citizens in Libya.

Asked about responses to the situation, 55% would support freezing Libyan assets in British banks. Only 21% though would support offering asylum to refugees fleeing from the country. On Gaddafi's own fate, a majority (54%) think he should be tried by the International Criminal Court if overthrown, 24% that a new Libyan regime should try him. People were evenly split on whether a new regime would be justified in executing him - 35% think it would be justifed, 32% think it would not.

YouGov then asked some questions about Britain's past relationship with Libya, in particular the attempts to normalise relationships over the last ten years. 40% think re-establishing positive diplomatic relations was the right thing to do, with 35% disagreeing. There is a similar split over trade links - 38% think it was right, 34% wrong. On some specifics, the majority (51%) of people thought it was right that British companies had invested in oil extraction in Libya, with only 21% objecting. However, only 7% thought it was right to have sold arms to Libya with 76% thinking it was wrong (later on the poll also asked if David Cameron was right to take representatives of arms companies on his Middle East tour - 62% thought it was wrong).

Summing it up, 45% think it was right that Britain tried to encourage a more positive relationship with Libya in the hope of encouraging reform, even if it ultimately failed. 39% thought it was wrong for Britain to have done deals with such a regime. There was no real party angle to this - answers were much the same for each party split, and most people think the Conservatives would have done exactly the same as Labour had they been in power at the time.

Finally on Libya, YouGov asked if Britain should request the return of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from any new Libyan regime. People were exactly split - 39% thought we should, 39% think we shouldn't.