Nigel Farage scores worse than Tristram Hunt on the gaffe-o-meter, but many people say it can be a good thing for a politican to change his or her mind
We've applied the gaffe-o-meter again. Using YouGov's First Verdict, we asked yesterday: "Ukip's Nigel Farage appeared to change Ukip policy during a BBC interview yesterday. The policy was to put a 50,000 cap on immigration, but then he told the Today programme: 'I’m not putting on caps or targets. You need to have more flexibility than that … You cannot have anything in politics without people obsessing over caps and targets and I think people are bored of it.' Was this a gaffe? If so, how serious, on a scale of 0 to 10?"
The average response (of 505 respondents) was 4.9, which compares with 4.5 for Tristram Hunt's 4.5 “nuns” remark.
Meanwhile, on a regular YouGov poll, we asked: "Thinking about when politicians make changes to the policies they've previously announced, which of of the following best reflects your view?" It splits slightly towards the positive:
- 35% thought "It's a bad thing - showing they don't think through their policies properly and don't know what they are doing"
- 41% thought "It's a good thing - showing they are willing to listen to people, accept criticism and make changes when necessary"
When we followed up specifically on the Farage comment, however, they split 38-33 towards the negative judgment!
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