“An international survey of almost 22,000 adults across 29 countries found British people had the third-most enthusiastic outlook towards refugees, just behind Spain and New Zealand.”
Edit: Just found the actual report by Ipsos. We are #1, not #2. Fixed the title.
Edit 2: We’re also the most likely to agree that refugees make a positive contribution to our country (70%). And here’s the breakdown on the central question:
I don’t pretend to know what the best course of action is. If you accept refugees with open arms, you may well find more and more boats making the trip (and more and more in distress).
But when the boats inevitably come, what do you do? It would surely be unpopular to send them back to their possible death. But accepting them may encourage more to come.
I honestly don’t know the answer, but trying to navigate something like that while also trying to please your voter base (which won’t even know the whole story or may make a snap judgement based on a headline) does not sound like fun to me.