YouGov/Sunday Times - full report
Full tables for the YouGov Sunday Times poll are now up here. Some of the European questions are, of course, rendered somewhat out of date by the veto, but there are some straws in the wind as to what we might expect the impact to be. There was a perception that Cameron should be tougher in negotiations - 44% of people think he should be tougher, 22% think he should try and work more closely with other European countries, 17% think he gets the balance about right (Conservative voters mostly think he should be tougher).
There was also a fair amount of trust in Cameron to negotiate in Europe - asked if they trust Cameron to look after Britain's interests in Europe 49% of people say they do, 44% do not. Asked the same question about Clegg, 28% of people trust him, 63% do not.
59% of people think David Cameron is right to oppose an EU tax on financial transactions, 18% think he is wrong. This is, of course, not the specific issue that was at hand at the European summit, but is is a similar protecting British banks -vs- Europe balance (it is also interesting to contrast it with other polls showing support for the principle of a financial transaction tax - my guess is that it's a case of people supporting a financial transaction tax when it is presented as a Robin Hood tax that will raise money for public services, or something that will punish naughty banks, etc, but when it is presented as something from the EU they oppose it).
However, there was also a perception that a closer monetary union in the rest of Europe would leave Britain sidelined - 51% thought it would, 21% thought it would not (what this doesn't show is whether or not respondents viewed that as a particularly bad thing or not!)
The survey also asked about law and order and policing. It is relatively even on whether people think the government has done better or worse on crime than the last government. 25% think they have done better, 29% worse, 38% the same (the divisions, as one might expect, are almost wholly down party lines). 64% of people think that their local police force are doing their job well (this is part of a typical pattern, people normally rate their local services far more positively than questions asking about national services).
Unsurprisingly 76% of people think there should be more police visible on the streets. However, the question on whether problems are due to a lack of officers, or the wrong policies and priorities shows a very even divide. 40% of people think there are already enough police officers but their priorities are wrong; 37% think that the police's priorities are right, there just aren't enough officers.
