Just over one in ten Brits (12 per cent) think Elon Musk has had a positive impact on British politics, according to Opinium’s latest poll.
The Tesla billionaire has launched a series of attacks on the UK government and Sir Keir Starmer regarding the handling of grooming gangs.
But only a tiny handful of Brits have found his contribution on the issue to have been constructive.
Just under half (47 per cent) of the UK public find Musk’s recent comments to be unhelpful to public discussion on grooming gangs compared to around a quarter (26 per cent) who think his comments have been helpful.
In total, most people think Musk is having a negative impact on British politics (53 per cent), with only 12 per cent thinking he is having a positive impact and 16 per cent thinking his is having a mix of positive and negative impact.
Additionally, the British public think Musk is having a negative impact on American politics (net negative -30 per cent).
Grooming gangs
Overall, the public do not see any of the major political parties as having handled the grooming gangs’ scandal well.
The current Labour government are thought to have responded badly to the issue now (-17 per cent net approval), although the previous Conservative government are seen as having responded worse when the issue first came to light (-27 per cent net approval).
Only narrowly do 2024 Conservative voters think their party responded well to the scandal when they were in government (+4 per cent net approval).
The current Conservative-led opposition’s response is not approved of by the public either (-11 per cent net approval).
Reform UK’s response is very narrowly approved of (+1 per cent net approval), however a higher proportion of people responded, ‘don’t know’ (33 per cent) when asked about them compared to other options.
Inquiry
Commenting on the polling, Adam Drummond, head of political and social research at Opinium, said:
“If you ask voters ‘should there be an inquiry into an important issue’ the answer will be ‘yes’. An inquiry sounds like doing something about the problem and doesn’t really consider opportunity costs. So it’s not surprising that the numbers are more nuanced when we put actual courses of action in front of people. 36 per cent think that a new inquiry into grooming gangs would uncover the truth and ensure justice, but 28 per cent think we should prioritise local councils holding their own inquiries and focus on implementing the recommendations from the last national inquiry. Even among Reform voters only 58 per cent choose a new inquiry while other parties are more evenly divided.
“One area of agreement though is a lack of enthusiasm about a foreign billionaire involving himself in British politics. When we put the actual words of what Elon Musk said about Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips in front of people, by 2 to 1 voters said this was not a helpful contribution to the discussion. By 4 to 1 voters say Musk is having a negative impact on British politics (53 per cent to 12 per cent). Reform voters are ambivalent (18 per cent positive, 37 per cent negative, 28 per cent mixed), something that probably would’ve been different before he called for Nigel Farage to be replaced.”
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