Britons Unimpressed by Politician’s Handling of Post-Stabbing Riots

06/08/2024. London, United Kingdom. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to the media follow
Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street
Oliver JJ Lane

A plurality of Britons think the Prime Minister is handling the unrest in England badly, and a majority think the political class as a whole is failing, polling finds as the protests and riots entered their second week.

Britons hold a pretty low opinion on the government’s response to a week of protests, demonstrations, riots, and now confrontations between ethnic groups sparked by the deadly mass knife attack against a class of young girls, allegedly by a Rwandan-heritage teen, last week. A strong plurality of 49 per cent told YouGov in figures published Tuesday they think the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is handling the riots badly.

Just 31 per cent think he’s doing a good job.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, like Starmer in the job for just a month after July’s general election, also fares badly, with 43 per cent unhappy with her work, and just 23 per cent saying she’s doing well. More striking is the broader dissatisfaction felt with the political class as a whole, for whom 60 per cent of Britons said they were handling the riots badly, compared to a rock-bottom 17 per cent happy with their performance.

The difference in disapproval between general feeling on politicians in the protests and individual leaders may come down to name recognition. While Home Secretary Cooper could breathe a sigh of relief that her disapproval hasn’t crossed 50 per cent, this could be more down to the fact more respondents entered an answer of don’t know or no opinion for her name than politicians in general, or the Prime Minister.

Indeed, for those who think they knew something about Cooper, far fewer proportionately thought she was doing a good job, and those who said bad were nearly double in number.

Meanwhile the public’s sympathy for rank-and-file police officers on the front line dealing with difficult situations shines through, with a majority at 52 per cent saying they were handling things either well or fairly well. But the public seem to be less optimistic for the future, with 58 per cent saying they had “not a lot” or no confidence that police would be able to “protect people and property from further unrest”, perhaps indicating broader feeling that clashes were set to continue whether the government wanted them to or not.

But it is clear the public as a whole wants unrest to end, with 75 per cent happy to see the government use water canon against rioters, and even 62 per cent content to see the army deployed.

The government believes there will be more protests on Wednesday, and the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the ‘COBRA’ emergency response committee on Tuesday night and said afterwards those who turned out would “feel the full force of the law”.

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