Two YouGov polls show that public support for Britain’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan has declined sharply. For Sky News we repeated two questions asked in August, while for Channel 4 News we repeated two questions first asked a fortnight earlier. Both show the same trends.
On October 22/23, 42% of the British public thought the Taliban could be defeated, while 48% thought they could not. By November 4/5, following the deaths of five British soldiers and Hamid Karzi’s controversial re-election as president, amid widespread accusations of corruption, just 33% think the war can be won, while a clear majority, 57% think victory is no longer possible.
As a result, our Sky News poll, conducted on November 5/6, finds that support for Britain's involvement in the war in Afghanistan has fallen to just 21%. Three times as many people - 63% - think British troops should not be fighting there. Opposition to the war has grown significantly since YouGov last asked this question for Sky News in August, when 28% backed the war and 57% opposed it.
Women oppose the war by more than six-to-one, with 70% saying British troops should not be in Afghanistan, and only 11% now approving the decision to send them. Among men the margin is less than two-to-one, with 32% saying the troops are right to be there and 56% opposing the war.
Recent events have done nothing to clarify the purpose of the war to the British public. Just 40% now say it is very or fairly clear why British troops are in Afghanistan - down from the 44% we recorded in August. the proportion saying it is not very clear, or not at all clear, why they are there is up from 55 to 57%.
What, then, does the public think should happen now? Our Channel 4 poll finds that, 35% now think all British troops should be withdrawn immediately – compared with 25% in late October. Only 20% think they should remain in the country “as long as Afghanistan’s government wants them there” – down from 29% two weeks ago. Once again there is a clear gender gap. Women are especially keen to see British troops come home: 40% think they should be withdrawn immediately, while just 13% think they should stay as long as they are needed. Men divide more evenly: 31% want them home immediately; while 28% think they should stay as long as they are needed.
Gordon Brown and other ministers plainly have a major challenge now to explain and justify the war, if public disenchantment is not to reach a point where it becomes politically difficult for the Government to keep British troops in Afghanistan - just as America's war in Vietnam became hard to sustain after the American public turned against the war forty years ago.
Ministers have one other challenge: to persuade the public that they are doing all they can to support British troops while they are in Afghanistan. 81% still think the Government needs to do more - virtually the same as the 82% recorded in August. At the moment, the prevailing public mood in Britain is that our troops have been sent to fight an unwinnable war with inadequate resources, and therefore should not be there. Unless those perceptions change sharply, and soon, the Afghan war could prove as damaging to Gordon Brown's premiership as the Iraq war eventually turned out to be for Tony Blair's.
