UK voters see relationship with Europe as of utmost importance

British voters see the country’s most important foreign relationship as being with the rest of Europe, according to a poll by Ipsos Mori seen by the Financial Times.

The polling company found that nearly half the public say relations with other European countries are the most important to the UK, while a quarter believed it was with the Commonwealth. Only one in five said the “special relationship” with the US mattered most.

British attitudes to the US, in particular, have changed over the past decade. A similar poll in 2003 also found Europe coming at the top of voters’ priorities but with the US much higher, with one in three saying it was the most important foreign relationship.

Ipsos Mori asked some of those it polled where they would place China in the UK’s list of priorities. Ten per cent said they thought it should be the most important, fewer than answered Europe, the US or the Commonwealth.

The survey comes a day after Ipsos Mori found support among UK voters for Britain’s membership of the EU was at its highest level since 1991. Both polls suggest that despite the recent surge in support for the anti-EU UK Independence party, Britons are becoming more positive about Europe.

The findings also suggest that few voters believe the claims of eurosceptic MPs who say the UK should leave the EU because other relationships are more important.

Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos Mori, told the Financial Times: “Voters have a sense of the world being interconnected. They are aware of the rise of China, but they are still placing Europe as the most important relationship, and have done for some time.”

The poll also found that British voters were increasingly supportive of the nation’s armed forces becoming involved in foreign conflicts. Some 80 per cent of the 1,000 people polled said they backed military action if either British interests or other people’s rights were threatened. More people backed intervention to protect foreigners’ rights than intervention purely in Britain’s own interests.

Nearly 60 per cent support Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as Isis, with most believing the action was right for humanitarian reasons rather than to protect British interests.