After The March

Tony Blair's answer to the challenge posed by last weekend's peace march has been, in effect, to ask the public to trust his judgment rather than their own. Five years ago, they might have done; but many fewer are prepared to do so these days. In MORI's most recent poll on the Iraq crisis, in the third week of January, just 26% approved of the way Mr Blair was handling the current situation, and his support may have fallen further since then. Mr Blair's personal and government ratings have both fallen sharply: the MORI Political Monitor at the end of January found only 26% of the public satisfied with the way the government is running the country and 33% satisfied with the way Mr Blair is doing his job as Prime Minister - almost identical to the troughs those ratings hit immediately after the fuel crisis in September 2000.

It seems likely that both opposition to a war and reluctance to trust Tony Blair are strongly driven by his close relationship with the USA and public distrust of President Bush and his administration. This is not, as some of Mr Blair's supporters have suggested, simple anti-Americanism. A MORI survey for the Expert Group, conducted at the end of January and published last week, finds that only one in five Britons take a generally unfavourable view of the United States; but twice as many say they distrust the USA "on matters of world security", and indeed 15% distrust the USA on such matters "completely".

Q Now I am going to read out the countries and institutions again, and this time I would like you to tell me how favourable or unfavourable your overall opinion or impression of each is. Take into account any of the things which you think are important. Remember that it is your overall opinion or impression that we are interested in.

Source: MORI/Expert Group Base: 2,058 British 15+, 23-27 January 2003

Q Now I am going to read out the countries and institutions again, along with some world leaders, and this time I would like you to tell me the extent to which you trust or distrust each on matters of world security?

Source: MORI/Expert Group Base: 2,058 British 15+, 23-27 January 2003

But distrust of the USA on world security pales besides distrust of its President on the same subject: only 18% of Britons trust George W Bush on this, and 64% distrust him; 34% distrust him completely. Tony Blair's ratings are a little better (39% trust him, 43% distrust him), but his net score is still negative; and, fairly obviously, the closer he is seen to stick to Mr Bush the less likely it is to improve.

Q Now I am going to read out the countries and institutions again, along with some world leaders, and this time I would like you to tell me the extent to which you trust or distrust each on matters of world security?

Source: MORI/Expert Group Base: 2,058 British 15+, 23-27 January 2003

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that public opinion is not swinging in favour of a war. ICM's poll in the Guardian this week, taken over the weekend of the march, puts opposition to war in Iraq at the highest level they have recorded in their trend series, 52%. However, there has been over the months a very strong differential between attitudes to bilateral US-UK action without UN approval and an assault backed by the UN - in our January poll only 15% supported the former but 61% supported the latter. The British public, apparently, places a high degree of trust in the United Nations - as, indeed, the tables above also show. If he can get a second security council resolution in favour of war, the Prime Minister may be thinking, most of the public will fall into line after all.

But that may all depend by what the public mean when they say they would support a war with UN backing. Maybe they really do mean that, though they would not trust Mr Blair's judgment on the situation they would trust the Security Council's, even if it went against their instincts; and maybe for some the international consensus is itself the issue, and not merely a means of judging the rights and wrongs.

But we know that for many of the public outcome is far more important than process: they may be backing the UN because they agree with its obstructing any military action, and say that they would only support a UN-backed attack because they believe the UN would not back an attack which they themselves would feel unjustified. If this is the case, then cajoling the UN into backing action against Iraq may do little to win over the public, but would simply shake its faith in the UN; Tony Blair would still be left needing to make his case on its merits or go to war without majority public backing.

(In this context, it is interesting that trust in the European Union on world security matters is also comparatively high, 38%. The EU, or at least some of its most prominent members, have certainly been portrayed as an obstacle to pursuing war in Iraq over the last few months. By way of comparison, in the Eurobarometer survey conducted last October and November, only 31% of Britons thought membership of the EU was "a good thing".)

At least one poll finding reported this week looks as if it may be misleading. Thursday's Daily Telegraph reported from its YouGov internet poll that women are no more likely than men to support an attack on Iraq under any circumstances. That contradicts consistent MORI and ICM findings from representative national samples that women are substantially more anti-war. For example, last week's ICM/BBC poll found 34% of men but 55% of women saying the UK should "not go to war, with or without a fresh mandate from the UN"; MORI's polls have similarly found a sharp gender difference.

The discrepancy seems to arise from YouGov's question wording, which bundles together the issuers of the threat posed by Iraq and justification of an attack without allowing respondents to distinguish between them.The options were:

• "Iraq does not pose a threat and any attack on Iraq would be unjustified",
• "Iraq does pose a threat and an attack would be justified if the UN Security Council decided that Saddam was failing to comply with its order to him to disarm", and
• "Iraq does pose a threat and Britain and the US would be justified in attacking Iraq even if the Security Council did not pass a resolution authorising them to do so".

How those who feel an attack is not justified even if Iraq does pose a threat - or, for that matter, those who support an attack to secure regime change on human rights grounds regardless of any military threat - should answer is by no means clear.

The ICM/BBC poll indicates how such an approach would blur the differences, since men's and women's opinions are similar in their assessment of the current situation but very distinct in their decisions on the appropriate response to it. It finds men and women in agreement on the threat posed by Iraq: 34% of men and 33% of women thought the British and American governments had proved their case that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. (The survey was completed before Hans Blix's latest report to the UN on 14 February). And 56% of men and 57% of women believe there are links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda and associated terror groups. They are also equally unlikely to agree that war in Iraq would deter other countries from developing WMDs (32% of men and 31% of women agree).

But, as already noted, men are more likely than women to feel this situation justifies an attack so long as the UN backs it. One contributory factor to this, presumably, is that 65% of men and only 44% of women think such a war would succeed in removing Saddam Hussein from power. Women were also much more sceptical of Mr Blair's motives, saying by 48% to 41% that he "acts as the foreign minister of the US and does anything that Bush wants him to do" rather than that "he does what he believes to be right for Britain"; men, however, give Mr Blair the benefit of the doubt by 51% to 38%.

This last contrast is at the heart of the task facing Mr Blair. To win over public support, it is vital that he convinces the public that he is thinking for himself and using his judgment, rather than that he is acting from possibly misguided loyalty to his American ally. Only once he was won that battle does the question of how much his judgment can be trusted become even relevant. Consequently the very distinct difference in men's and women's opinions is a vital facet of the current public opinion situation.

That same gap is present when we look at men's and women's opinions to the USA in the MORI/Expert Group poll. Distrust of the USA on world security issues is at a similar level among women (42%) and men (43%), but trust among women is lower (31%, against 39% among men), with the remaining women having no opinion either way. The same is true of trust/distrust of Mr Bush. But this feeds through into more women than men distrusting Tony Blair as well as fewer trusting him; net trust in Mr Blair is 0 among men but -8 among women. It is probably not coincidental that far fewer women than men feel they know the USA well (67% of men say they know at least a fair amount about the USA, and only 52%). As we often say, familiarity breeds favourability - and Mr Blair could do with some favourability towards, and trust in, the USA at the moment.

Of course, in the long-term much of this may be irrelevant. If there is a war, its future impact on government and prime ministerial popularity is likely to be determined by its outcome, not by the state of public opinion before it starts: he will get the credit for a successful war and the blame for a disastrous one regardless of whether the decision to fight was popular or unpopular. But for the moment, if British troops go to war in Iraq, it seems likely that it will be in the face of considerable British public opposition.