Is Britain Facing a Crisis of Political Trust?
| Published date | 01 December 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058241305489 |
| Author | Ben Seyd |
| Date | 01 December 2024 |
18POLITICAL INSIGHT•DECEMBER 2024
In July, Labour’s King’s Speech promised to
‘rebuild trust’ in Britain. That’s a tall order
for Keir Starmer and his government.
This year’s British Social Attitudes (BSA)
report found that trust in politics among the
UK population has fallen to its lowest level
ever recorded. Almost half the population (45
per cent) now say they ‘almost never’ trust
government, up from 12 per cent since the
question was rst included in the survey, in
1986. Those who trust government ‘always or
most of the time’ has fallen from 40 to 14 per
cent in the same timeframe (Curtice, Montagu
& Sivathansan, 2024).
The decline of trust witnessed in
Britain is not replicated across all western
democracies. Granted, in countries like
Australia, France and the USA, citizens’
trust in their governments has fallen over
time. Trust has also fallen in countries hit
hardest by the 2008 nancial crash, notably
Greece and Spain. Yet in many other west
European countries, levels of trust have
been maintained or even – as in cases like
Germany and Sweden – increased. So, the
deterioration of public trust in Britain raises
two key questions: what has caused the
drop and what are its likely eects?
Is Britain Facing a
Crisis of Political Trust?
Trust in British politics has never been lower. Ben Seyd examines
why so many have lost faith in their politicians and asks whether
the consequences are likely to be as terminal as often assumed.
Down the trust rabbit hole:
But why?
One difficulty in identifying why trust in
Britain has fallen over the past 40 years
is the paucity of good longitudinal data.
As a result, some factors likely to have
contributed to declining public trust –
such as how people judge politicians’
behaviour – are difficult to assess. However,
data from long-running surveys like the
BSA and British Election Study enable us
to explore how factors such as appraisals
of policy performance, feelings of policy
representation, media exposure and
demographic characteristics might have
affected trends in trust.
In my recent book on political trust, I draw
on longitudinal data which shows that one
reason for the decline of trust in Britain is
© Horst Friedrichs / Alamy Stock Photo
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