UK riots: Voters trust police more than politicians

London: More British voters support the police over the handling of the recent riots than Prime Minister David Cameron, according to a Guardian/ICM poll.It also that shows that less than a third of voters think the prime minister has done a good job. The poll suggests that neither Cameron nor London mayor Boris Johnson have impressed the public with their response.Only 30 percent say Cameron has done a good job, against 44 percent who say the opposite.[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Older voters and richer ones lay the blame on criminality as a cause of the riots. AP"]

[/caption]For Johnson, the figures are 28 percent good job and 38 percent bad. By contrast, 45 percent think that the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Tim Godwin, has done well against 27 percent who say the opposite.Another online poll, conducted this week by YouGov, found similar levels of support for the police response over that of politicians.Despite the scale of the rioting, and accusations that the police mishandled the initial disorder in Tottenham, public trust in the police seems uniformly strong, according to The Guardian.Overall 61 per cent of those polled say they are confident that the police enforce the law fairly, uniformly and without prejudice.By contrast a total of 36 percent say they are either not at all (10 percent) or not very (26 percent) confident.There is some evidence that younger or poorer people are less likely to trust the police than older or better-off ones, but in all categories a majority are satisfied.There is also widespread agreement about the main causes of the riots and looting, it said.Asked to pick from a list of possible reasons, 45 per cent blame criminality on the part of the rioters.Older voters and richer ones are most likely to lay the blame on this. Of other possible reasons, 28 percent cite lack of respect within families and communities. Only 8 percent think a lack of jobs for young people is the main reason.A further 5 percent say the shooting by the police of Mark Duggan, which led to the initial disorder in Tottenham, was the main cause, while 4 percent blame the coalition government, 2 percent the police and 2per cent the state of the economy.At the bottom of the list only one percent blame racial tension, a finding that suggests these riots are being seen differently by the public to those of the 1980s.PTI