Decline in UK government trust

Trust thought for today - I have put together some serious eye opening stats from a variety of sources about the decline in trust in the UK government.

They show that British people's trust in government is among the lowest in the OECD. That the majority of people think politicians are merely out for themselves, that they are likely to lie and mislead the public, it makes them feel powerless and disengaged and feel that nothing they can do will make much of a different.

But what are the real implications of this lack of trust. This first part in a two part article looks at evidence from a fantastic recent report from the Inter-American Development Bank. The team looked at the economies and societies of Latin American and the Caribbean, who are among the least trusting in the world, and came to the surprising conclusion that “Trust is the most pressing and yet least discussed problem’ these countries face and that the effects of distrust are perhaps the most critical factor in their poor economic and social performance.

These trust factors map very scarily onto the statistics on the decline in public trust in the UK today.

So what can be done to restore trust to politics and government and what can the UK learn? That is the job of the next article. All is not lost and one of the most important factors might be that small stat buried in the OECD report that British people have much more trust in each other than most other countries.

Lots of implications for politicians, policy, regulation (I wondered about the financial community Roger Miles, Ruth Steinholtz with the belief that everyone is scamming so it is fair game for them too?) even if the belief that no-one can really be trusted might have implications for the system problems you wrote about Gill Kernick?

Love any thoughts as usual!