About four in ten insist it doesn’t matter whether political leaders watch the Queen’s speech, and a similar number disagree
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made a regal blunder this week when he claimed that he usually watched the Queen’s speech at 10am on Christmas Day, despite it not airing until 3pm.
But it may not be a big issue. Only three in ten people believe it’s important that a political leader watches the speech. An additional 9% say it’s only important if you’re Prime Minister or leader of the opposition, and another 4% say that only the Prime Minister should have to watch.
Four in ten people (42%) say it doesn’t matter at all.
Conservative voters are more likely to mind whether or not political leaders tune in to the Queen on Christmas Day, with 46% saying it matters. In contrast, only about a quarter of Labour (23%) and Lib Dem (27%) voters agree.
Like Corbyn, many Brits say they don’t watch the Queen’s speech attentively. Four in ten don’t watch it at all, while a fifth watch extracts on the news later. Another 17% say they have it on in the background while doing other things.
Only about one in six (18%) say they’ll stop what they’re doing to watch it, including 12% who say they watch it closely.
