YouGov/Sunday Times round up
The full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are now up here, this week concentrating on the banks and the LIBOR fixing scandal.
Pausing to look at the regular leader approval ratings first Cameron is on minus 27 (from minus 24 last week), Ed Miliband on minus 24 (from minus 25), Clegg on minus 55 (from minus 54). So Ed Miliband goes back to having the best approval rate of the three main party leaders, although essentially Cameron and Miliband's net ratings have been roughly the same as each other for the last month or so.
Turning to the banks, YouGov first asked respondents to say how ethnical and principled various professions were on a scale of 1 to 5. 77% of people thought that bankers generally had no ethics or principles (50% of people rating them right at the bottom of the scale). This was worse than any other profession asked about, the next lowest were tabloid journalists and then politicians. The stereotypical bogeyman, estate agents and car salesmen, were seen as significantly more ethical and principled than bankers. Asked directly to compare politicians fiddling their expenses, journalists hacking phones or banks lying about their interest rates, 36% of people thought the politicians were the worst, 34% the bankers and 24% the journalists.
Surprisingly the general questions on whether people trusted the High Street banks to look after their money, and to be honest and competent were all significantly UP since YouGov asked the same questions last week. This is an unexpected finding - my best guess at an explanation is because the Natwest IT story has faded away from the headlines again, which was perhaps more directly relevant to people's experiences of high street banking than the LIBOR scandal.
Turning specifically to the LIBOR scandal 86% of people think Bob Diamond was right to resign and, unsurprisingly, 83% of people think he should not keep his pay off (though I suspect most of them would have objected to him getting £20 million even if he hadn't resigned and Barclay's hadn't lied about their borrowing rates!). 84% of people think it was unacceptable for Barclays to lie about the interest rates it was paying even if this did stop the banking crisis from getting worse and 83% think other banks were probably doing the same thing.
On who if anyone gave permission or influenced Barclays to lie about their interest rates 33% of people think Barclays did it on their own initiative just to benefit themselves, 41% of people think they were influenced to do it by the bank of England. That 41% is made of 14% who think the Bank of England was acting without ministers knowledge, and 27% - just over a quarter of people - who think that the last Labour government was implicated it in. As one might expect, these answers were largely along partisan lines - most Tory voters think the Bank of England were involving in influencing Barclays (although even then, only a minority think Labour ministers did ), Labour voters are far more likely to think Barclays were doing it on their own initiative.
The survey also repeated some House of Lords questions from a week ago, showing no obvious change in opinion from a fortnight ago. 14% of people support a mostly appointed Lords, 42% a mostly elected Lords, 29% a mixture of the two.
