Polls in the UK continue to show widespread support for Western sanctions against Russia. Yet as always with polling, the devil is in the detail.
At the end of October, Ipsos carried out a poll for Sky News asking Britons whether they support Western sanctions against Russia. 70% said they did, which is only 8 points lower than the figure for March. This suggests the vast majority of people are still onboard.
However, Ipsos then asked respondents whether they support sanctions even if the sanctions lead to higher energy prices (which they clearly do). Here, the change since March was much starker:
Now, less than half of respondents say they support sanctions, and almost a third actively oppose them. Compare this to March, when the figures were 73% and 8%, respectively.
It’s unclear what accounts for the disparity between the percentage who support sanctions and the percentage who support them if they lead to higher energy prices – a disparity that barely existed back in March. One possibility is that people still support the general idea, but they’re increasingly concerned about costs.
Digging into the tables, you find that the strongest predictor of support for sanctions is age. Almost 50% of those aged 55–75 support sanctions even if they lead to higher energy prices, compared to just 28% of 16–24 year olds.
In a previous article, I suggested this age divide stems from memories of the Cold War. Older generations still see Russia as ‘enemy number one’, whereas younger generations know it as just another corrupt, authoritarian country.
Another possibility is that older generations feel more economically secure, so are more willing to bear the costs of sanctions. Indeed, respondents who said they were “finding it difficult to manage” were more likely to oppose sanctions than to support them.
From the winter of 2021–22 to the summer of 2022, the “default tariff price cap” (the amount the average household pays for electricity) went up by about £700. It has gone up by another £500 in the fourth quarter of this year, and will rise again next April. This means British consumers haven’t yet felt the full impact of the energy crisis.
By December, they will be paying roughly twice as much for energy as they did the year before – £2,500 rather than £1,277. Support for sanctions may therefore erode further in the coming months.
Of course, when it comes to lifting sanctions, the U.K. is very unlikely to be the first mover; it’s one of the most hawkish countries on Russia and one of the closest allies of the United States.
The place to watch is Germany, which still has within its power the capacity to receive gas through the intact portion of Nord Stream 2. Although the government has publicly ruled this out, pressure may mount as energy bills continue to rise.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Their model appears to be biased towards finding extinction wherever it can. In their model climate change:
I don’t wish to be too blasé about the impact of climate change, but every study that comes out appears to suffer from serious flaws, suggesting that the supporting evidence in general for ‘the climate disaster’ is weak.
Anyway, even if disaster is imminent (which I very much doubt), all of the self-flagellation coming from Western nations is unlikely to make the slightest difference, given that the rest of the world is keen to carry on as normal (or even take advantage of ‘the economical niches’ that are emerging because the the countries of the West are slowly destroying their economies).
Surprise, surprise. A national newspaper promoting a scare story that could happen, but only in the imagination. The only mass extinction will com from the Globalist plan to ban farming and energy for ordinary people.
If anyone needs someone to talk to we meet every Sunday.
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am From 1st January 2023
Make friends & keep sane
Elms Field (near Everyman Cinema and play area)
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Holy Hannah! It just gets worse.
Planet Earth Has existed for 4.6 billion years, if you compressed that epoc into a 24 hour clock, homo sapiens existence would occupy the last 30 seconds! (90 seconds before that would be the evolution from were ever we came)
The last known ele (extinction level event)
happened 65 million years ago and wiped out 90% of ALL life on earth, yet, here we are with a world more abundant in life that has ever been known to science!
Do the people that write this b%^*!hit really think we are gods or something? with the ultimate power to create,save or destroy the world at our command? If I did believe in God I would beg him(her and all other pronouns) for the good grace to forgive his nieve and arrogant children!
The only things heading towards extinction are honesty, truth and common sense
You forgot intelligence Stu.
So it is not real fauna and flora which are disappearing, but virtual ones inside models. Perhaps they should adapt the characteristics of their virtual species to make them more robust, and then apply these in real life to make the Earth’s inhabitants more resilient.
However, this has worked through the millennia without man’s interference and resulted in a fantastic diversity.
I really do wish the god of the old testament would return and dish some Sodom and Gomorrah treatment to our beloved rulers. Never was a class of ppl so undeserving of their status based on their fighting abilities or their ideas, even the French aristocracy was more worthy than this lot.
Another computer model. When will we learn?
I think those who read the Daily Sceptic already have, the rest react to computer models and the media like the bloke in the Life of Brian, picking up a sandal and proclaiming it is a sign.
The only thing missing from this Eco Nutter Fairytale is the correct ending of the story:
“So the Global “Elites” decided a mass culling of humans would be preferable and put into motion their plans to achieve it.”
Just read an article in Reuters Science section, proclaiming that over a million species are threatened with extinction. It really is an apocalyptic article, and guess what? it is all our fault.
It states 50% of the planet needs to be conserved to save 85% of the remaining species, which is interesting in itself, as humans inhabit the best places to live on the planet.
I suppose as the climate panic wanes there needs to be another manufactured panic waiting, and ready to go.
“According to the Mail, the scientists aimed to build an “ecologically plausible Earth”.”
Then they royally screwed up.
Plausible?
Do they even know what that means?
Apart from the Bramble Cay melomys, a mutant rat, they can name not even one. And their 5ºC temperature is the old RCP8.5 “Business as Usual” spook lie (‘Borderline impossible’ as Judy Currie pointed out) envisioning coal burn 5 times 2000 levels and no-one and no creature doing anything to alleviate even the most basic problems.
The Mail’s first mistake was to categorise these GangGreen numpties as “scientists”.
I get more entertainment out of of CM’s articles taking the pee out of climate mob hysteria than I do out of Private Eye these days. I’ve cancelled my subscription and make donations to DS instead. Time I did the same with the BBC licence fee. Happy Xmas to my reader.
“There’s no scientific basis for saying that 50,000 species are going extinct.”————That is because Climate Change (global warming) mostly isn’t science. ——–When every doom-laden forecast has turned out to be not just wrong, but very wrong, then you begin to realise that the so called “science” is really just the big excuse for more Central planning, regulation and mandates, and less freedom and choice. Despite this barrage of misinformation masquerading as “science” failing on every single occasion to produce anything remotely like what has actually occurred in the real world, the general public seem not to have lost their appetite for more of the same stuff.—— Most of the politicians and bureaucrats who subscribe to the lifestyle changes that their “saving the planet” policies require, would be humiliated and embarrassed by their total lack of knowledge on this issue if they had to explain the basics of it to a primary school class. So, they fall back on this idea that there is “consensus” and they think this will spare them the embarrassment of making a fool of themselves. But as Aristotle knew “Consensus is the weakest form of argument”