246. What Britain thinks: Is the monarchy our greatest soft power asset?

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0:49Hello and welcome to the Restus Politics, me, Alistair Campbell. That me Rory Stewart. Now, we're going to do our question time episode now, but we've just had the results back from our second The Restus Politics poll brought to you by J .L. Partners. We've noted down lots of your ideas and some of the issues that Rory and I've been discussing on the podcast over the last month, and we've pulled them with the public to help inform our discussions. And I'm really proud of this poll because it's a monthly tracker poll that we're going to be running exclusively all the way through to the election.

1:19And unlike other polls, this is much more nuanced and detailed that allows us to help shape by listeners, to really follow some very interesting detailed questions through to the election. And at the end of this we'll get on to question time. So if you'd like to see the poll results in full, including lots of different graphics and some really depressing word clouds, we send our members in the newsletter form, so just go to the restuspolitics .com to sign up. Right then, Alistair. So what struck you as a veteran poll reader about this poll? I mean, some of it unexpated, some of it expated. I think we should, I'm going to start with the fact that I asked them to ask what sources of news and political debate people trust and television and radio are still top.

2:09And that was a great question, wasn't it? Because yeah, I think it was a really good question. I said, because I thought you know, the what can't come through from this, as you can see, is there's a big difference that you can tell on the relationship between the media and how you vote. So people who get most of their news from television are roughly representative of the general population in terms of where they vote. But people who get most of their information from newspapers tend to be more right -wing. And astonishingly, people who get most of their information from social media and podcasts tend to be more left -wing.

2:39But also fascinating, I thought, was that people trust opinion polls less than they trust newspapers even. And they don't trust newspapers very much. So we should have that caveat in front of everything that we say. That being said. And it's a big problem for the podium series, because it's obviously how they make their money. And they're very defensive at this. But the public basically has a sense that opinion polls miscalled Brexit, miscalled the 2015 election, miscalled the 2017 election, miscalled Hillary Clinton against Trump, etc. Absolutely. So I think we should always be careful with polls.

3:14They are snapshots. They are not necessarily. They talk about this thing about the margin of error. But a lot of the polls were well outside the margin of error in some of those that you've mentioned. Well, they're equally what's the alternative? And the alternative presumably is what used to exist a hundred years ago, which is politicians going around saying, well, I felt on the doorstep where I feel my water is going to be fine. So I guess on the state of the parties, they're pretty much where they were last time. In terms of the popularity of the leaders, Suneak is still well behind Kierstammer on virtually every positive leadership attribute.

3:49There has been a little bit of hardening of support for their very, very hard line on immigration. I was surprised to see that actually every demographic virtually broadly supports a very hard line of immigration, including the Rwanda policy, which again, it emphasizes that you got to be careful about being in your own bubble. Most of the people I had deal with, most of people I meet absolutely despise the whole thing, hate it. And yet the public broadly, not massively, but broadly supported. And I guess this is something that in your professional life in politics, you needed to be aware of all the time.

4:23It's something that opinion polls and focus groups can do, which is question the bubble could. Did you have any memories when you were in government from when a focus group or an opinion poll made you stop and think, well, that's quite interesting. The public is actually in a slightly different position from where we might have thought they were on something. We talked about the Macron interview and the economist on the on the main podcast and he had this line that, you know, politics is not about following polls, politics is about ideas and it's about leadership. And I believe that as well. But I think one of the reasons why Brexit happened was that we were a little slow to see the extent to which all of these things were coming together.

5:00Immigration, Europe, the general sort of anti -foreign sentiment. Now, I don't know if we could have done more, but I definitely was conscious when I used to attend focus groups. Philip Gold would do the groups. I would sit in the background and hide and watch them and nearly always leave, depressed because this stuff would keep coming back. Now, you could report that back and also presumably you were often finding that messages that you'd hoped it got through had not got through. Oh my god. Oh my god. I'll never forget we're right back in the day. Going to focus group after, Tony had become leader and somebody said, I'm not sure about Labour, I think they picked the wrong leader.

5:41And so I'm sitting there thinking, obviously somebody likes Gordon Brown. So Philip said, who do you think they should have picked? And he said, well, I'd quite like Ian Lang. Now, one. How did he go? Can you remind people who Ian Lang was? I think I'll have to because not many people will know. Ian Lang was the secretary of state, the Tory secretary of state for Scotland. So this was a focus group in Watford. And obviously, you're sitting on Telly and thought, I quite like him. And so you think, God almighty, Tony and Gordon have been out there day after day after day. But the other thing that's interesting this poll is this question of visibility.

6:20So people are asked whether they've been conscious aware of and they were given four names, Richie Soonack, Gears, Simon Nigel Farage, Ed Davy. Richie Soonack is by a long way the most visible. 25 % say they've seen him a lot. 39 % say they've seen him quite a bit. 23 % not very much. 13 % not at all. In other words, they've not been conscious of Richie Soonack on their telephones, on their televisions and their newspapers. Gears, Simon, a lot. 13 % that's half of Soonack. Quite a lot. Pretty much the same. Not very much. 34 % 16 % nothing. Nigel Farage, a lot. 4 % That's nothing. 16 % quite a bit.

7:0044 % not very much. 36 % not at all. So you and I probably think because we see what he does on social media and we know that he's doing GB news. Probably think Farage is very, very visible. He's not visible at all. Ed Davy, a lot. 2%. It's the libde md. Yeah. You even feel that he too about people. Quite a bit. 11 % not very much. 45 % nothing not at all. 42%. So this visibility issue is and I saw we don't have this polling, but I saw some polling recently a survey of asking people to recognize politicians from pictures. And if you take out Soonack, Johnson, Stammer, a very, very small number, you're into very, very, very low numbers, including for senior cabinet ministers and senior shed a guy.

7:47I remember this, the slightly humiliating thing when I was running to be mayor of London, that it turned out that barely 50 % of people had any idea who I was. So the whole thing was that it pretty much a disaster from the beginning. Despite Rory walks. Despite Rory walks. You get sleep. So Rory stays in your flat. What happens is that you have seven candidates listed as independent. And if they don't know your name, there's no way you're going to get a vote at all. You might forget about this. This question on visibility. It is something you want to notice. I guess I noticed it a lot with David Cameron.

8:16He seemed to be on the telly all the time. All the time. Rory, Soonack clearly tries to be on the telly all the time. He's on the telly every day. Right. And how does he achieve that? How do you persuade telly to put you on every day? Well, how do you persuade him? I taught to somebody recently who used to work for him. And I said, does Soonack think he's really good at this? I said what do you mean? He said, well, the fact that he's on the telly communicates him every single day, says to me, because I don't think he's very good at it, right? I think he's quite irritating in his manner. He's very petulant.

8:45But he must think he's good at it. Otherwise, he wouldn't do every day. And this guy says no, he actually hates it. And he has to be persuaded. So here's team of told saying it's really important you're on every day. You've got it. Well, you've got to be out there all the time. And would you have given him that advice? Because it's a bit difficult, right? On the one hand, there's a built on the other hand, you're saying that actually he may not be that great at it. So he might not want to matter. I think he's I think sometimes he's better than other times. But I think the problem is that he, we're going to be putting out soon this interview with Mr.

9:14Tarkas, the Greek Prime Minister, who's kind of quite similar to Soonack in some ways, background in finance and very well educated, all that stuff. But he, his communication style, I felt, and admitted it was a long interview. So maybe he's not like this on short clips on TV. But he was very thoughtful, very reflective. Whereas I always feel with Soonack. And this was this was born out to me by this guy that I talked to. He said, what happens is we persuade him to go out. We tell him what to say. He rehearses it. He memorizes it. He goes and does it. But you feel that when he's doing it. And this is the fault isn't it?

9:48Of actually something which you were unfairly blamed for bringing to British politics and got actually much worse after you left politics, which is this memorizing lines, which Liz Truss was great at. But I remember when I used to go on question time, you do these sort of four -hour briefings where you were almost made to memorize line after line after line after line. And when you said to the people who were briefing you, what does this line mean? Or what happens if people ask you the next question? They didn't really have an answer to it. And I think you may be right there. Maybe what you're saying is, Rishi Soonack needs to get out every day.

10:21But what he should have done is lend him to the fact that he is actually a very educated, thoughtful person. And he just let him give more complicated rounded answers, delivering the kind of really efficient sound bite. May work in certain contexts. But you've got to match it to the individual. And if the individual's not that type of personality, the same way. Maybe we should go into these really depressing word clouds where we're asked, we asked again, this is this high has this one. The only prime minister in recent times who gets, well Tony Blair gets charismatic and Margaret Thatcher gets strong.

10:59But Tony Blair also gets weak, which I think is a bit odd, liar. So he gets a lot of negative ones. Gordon gets university negative. John Major gets university. Sorry, just to summarize, these worklats, what people think of the main thing, everybody except Tony Blair and Boris Johnson basically gets weak and incompetent. We can incompetent, just repeated. Gordon Brown, they public perceives weak, John Major, they perceives weak, trees and may, David Cameron, Rishi Soonack, all perceives weak. Tony Blair isn't perceived as weak and incompetent, but he's perceived as dishonest. And Boris Johnson isn't perceived as weak, he's perceived as dishonest.

11:34So it's a really kind of tragic situation. It seems the British public has a choice between things that either gets someone who's weak or they get someone who they think is dishonest. But it reinforces how I think frozen politics feels, that the public senses that nothing changes, that politicians come, politicians go and the system is so rigid and the problems are so deep, you know, productivity is stagnant, public services are screwed, the country is bankrupt, and there's nothing really that anyone can do, which is why this question of being strong keeps coming back again and again, because what they're looking for is somebody who's going to break through that.

12:17And the danger of that, of course, is that you end up voting for popular, see, you end up voting for, you know, people like Boris Johnson who pretend they're going to break through and then the public say their lies. It's looking at these, just to explain to people how these word clouds work. So you ask lots of people to give you a word. And then the cloud will put the word that comes up most at the center. So for David Cameron is posh, surrounded by bad, weak and useless. The John Major is gray, surrounded by boring and weak. For that, sure, it's strong, surrounded by iron and evil. And then for, I've got to say, soon, X is the worst, I think, because he's got three very big words and a four smaller word.

13:01He's got weak, rich and posh, and he's got incompetent. List Trust has got a massive useless. So what that says is that people said that way more than Theresa May has got weak and useless. Boris Johnson's got liar, idiot and funny and clown as a fourth one. So, and I think I said Gordon Brown had nothing positive. Actually he does. He's got Scottish. Scottish is his second word. So that is a very positive. You and I assume that's positive in the word cloud. I do. I say that as a big positive. But I think this, you know, again, this is something we've talked about a lot of the people that are into you and are leading.

13:39It's a real problem. It's because whatever you think of them is, you know, you and I both frankly despise Boris Johnson. Don't really rate this trust. But you have a lot of respect for Theresa May. I have some respect for Theresa May. I have a lot of respect and time for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. And I think this general utter negativity about all politicians is a real problem. And it's not just in in the UK. I was reading yesterday in a German newspaper about a real spike in physical attacks on politicians in Germany at the moment. Now, and we've had two murders, of course. And we just have to do.

14:17We just have to take care of them. Nancy Pelosi out this week whose husband was violently attacked. Absolutely. And one of the themes over the time we've been doing this podcast is just how many political leaders are resigning in their prime. See, with these violent leaders in New Zealand, all during the time that we've been doing this connected. There's another one that we put into this week is this theme that we've explored quite a lot on the podcast over the last couple years, which is a sense that voters are getting more authoritarian. And this poll suggests that voters on left and right are not that concerned about freedom of speech.

14:57They seem to be surprisingly comfortable with the idea of the police shutting down demonstrations and movements on both sides. Now, and that really puts the emphasis on how incredibly important it is that we have leaders in Europe and the US who hold for democratic values because public opinion gives them more space to be authoritarian than any of us would be comfortable with. So little tribute also to Tom Lubbock who was a professor at Oxford and then became part of this polling company and James Johnson who brought us together. One thing that they would probably say is because this is a monthly tracker, it allows us to detect very small movements out of the surface, which is difficult in four weeks to know whether they're representative, but they may be early signs or something.

15:47And one of the things that shifted over a month is that Rishi's junior exposition is slightly strengthening on getting things done. And Stama's visibility and this Reptature and Getting Things are slightly slightly weakening. And there's been a bit of a rise over the last four weeks in, as you said, and the public's focus on immigration. I presume that's because of the passing of the Rander bill. Pass around to the go. And a slight decline of focus on the economy. So I guess if you were trying to make the case for why things may be slightly tilting back in the conservative's favour, I mean, not in any way that they're going to win an election.

16:29I'm going to remain absolutely convinced that Labour's going to win a stonking majority, but possibly a lot of the things that troubled you and me has announced some benefits passing the Rander bill. Some of his sort of punchy statements over the last three, four weeks may have slightly strengthened Rishi's junior exposition compared to where he was. A few sort of specific issues, I'm very pleased to say there is a considerable majority support for compulsory voting. There is considerable support for assisted dying to be made legal. 62 percent, yes, 17 percent, no, the rest either neither or don't know.

17:05I was very interested in the, as you know, I'm very interested in the whole sort of thing about soft power. So we asked people, we gave people a list of things that could represent soft power and asked them to order them and merit. If you take all voters, the monarchy comes number one, you'll be pleased to know. Extremely pleased to know. And actually, it still comes very high, even with Labour voters. Yeah, just behind it is the NHS. So there the top two, then come the English language and the BBC, universities and education, the Premier League, courts and the rule of law, and the first sort of cultural figure, if you cultural individual, as it were, is Shakespeare.

17:41Not David Attenborough, is it? No, he wasn't in the list. And then if you go down, the countryside comes quite high, London comes high, the beetles are in there, Dells in there. It's not, it's not, I mean, it's in a way that some of it's not very surprising. But I think the monarchy is a little surprising, isn't it? You wouldn't necessarily... The current Labour voters, the NHS comes top, the monarchy, a high second. The monarchy, a high second. The current Liberal Democrat, the monarchy comes top, the NHS, a high second. Surprisingly low, I thought the fashion industry might do better, that's right down the bottom.

18:12Adele struggles, she was the only sort of, carer of the thing that we put in there, the beetles do a lot better. But I thought that was interesting that the monarchy was right up there. So we asked people whether broadly they were sympathetic to Israel or Palestine. Now I know it's particularly in the current climate, that's a pretty polarising question to ask. Neither and don't know were considerably ahead, but for those who did choose, then it was a narrow plurality for Palestine with 18 to 34 -year -olds, the most sure that Palestine was the one that the side that it was should be supportive.

18:52Final one for me, in terms of visions of Kierstarma, slightly reinforces something that we're seeing in focus groups as well, which is a sense that somebody in one of the focus groups that run by Tom and James said of Starma that they think he paints by numbers. And what I think they mean by that is that they get a sense that he's being very methodical and moving forward the election, but he doesn't really have the passion for things. So again, it's an encouragement maybe for him to take a little risk and find some issues that he's really identified with in Kierstarma. Even if they're a little bit unpopular, so he could take a strong line on the environment, he could take a strong line, maybe on supporting Transgenderist use against the conservative, but just to show that there's something that he really cares about and is identified with.

19:42Yeah, no, I think that is a bit, the moment is missing. I think there are some policies, but I think the level of public awareness where people say I'm voting Labour because, and I think they need to really, really, really step better. Let's just close by this polling, actually, suggests the public is better informed about a lot of things that most polls do, because most polls show incredible misunderstanding of the facts of our own country. So the public think that 26 % of the population earn more than 50 ,000 per year. Okay, the actual number is 34. That's not bad. The public think that 25 % of the population are pensioners.

20:20It is actually 19. They think that 25 % of the population are ethnic minorities. It's 18. They think 20 % of the population are university graduates. It's 37. Oh, well, that's, frankly, that's the biggest discrepancies that we see. There's a really big one to come, really big one to come. 20 % of the population receive universal credit. It's actually nine, so there's a doubling of that. And that's about the whole kind of welfare, scroungy debate. That's our right wing press at play, and the forages of this world bullshitting. They think the 15 % of the population live in London is 13. They think that 15 % of the population is an immigrant, and the actual number is 15%.

21:00So they're banging with that one. They think 12 % of the population is LGBT+. It's three. They think 10 % of the population earn more than 100 ,000 a year is eight. And here's the way off. They think that 5 % of the population die from COVID, which will be about 3 million people. Yeah, it's actually 0 .0 .3%. Yeah. But that's pretty good. A lot of polls you see are way off kilters. So this seems to be a pretty well informed. Well, it's good. It's good. I mean, it's really important for a democracy that broadly speaking, the public share a conception of where the country is and where we are because it means the policy decisions will sense well.

21:41But it also brings into it. I mean, one of the things I was actually that I was beginning to think about as a cliche that I might tease a little bit that comes out of those figures is people saying I'm the first generation in my family to go to university and people often say it as though it makes them unique. But 37 % of the population now go to university. And when my mother went to university in the 50s, well, no, 37 % are graduates. Well, so 37 % are now graduates, right? But probably there are more than 50 % of all of that. Yeah, if you go back to my mother, I think when she went to university, it would be less than 1 % of the population.

22:15So in fact, almost everybody who goes to university will be the first generation of their family to go to university. It's not necessarily something that makes you unique. Great. Okay. Well, thanks for the poll, JL partners. We'll now have a quick break and come back with fewer questions unusual because we've already given you half an hour of our fascinating analysis of our fascinating polling. We'll be back in a minute. Very good.

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23:51Welcome back to the Restisted Politics Polling Special. Now I'm going to take probably a few of your questions in normal because we've done half an hour in the polling. So now here's one to quick off with. Andrea, with a little crab accent on the second day. What were your respective best and worst days in all your time in politics and government? Oh my lord. I can give you my best and worst, my best good Friday agreement coming together. Worst, David Kelly, body being found. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My worst was when I'd given an interview to the Scottish son. Which is about the string. I'd said that there was some, I managed to produce the phrase, there are some pretty primitive areas in my constituency with people.