The trust deficit in Britain’s damaged politics

As Britain’s Conservatives fight to avoid an electoral catastrophe, for many wavering voters the escalating scandal over election betting will be a final straw. Four Conservatives including aides to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — two of them election candidates — are known to be under investigation by the Gambling Commission over allegedly placing bets on the timing of the general election. The regulator is reportedly looking into more. Many members of the public will see this as yet another example of the erosion of trust in political ethics under successive UK governments — especially those of recent years.

Days before the betting affair erupted, a survey found public trust in government at a record low. The National Centre for Social Research found 45 per cent of people would “almost never” trust administrations of any hue to put the nation’s interest before their party’s. Some 58 per cent would “almost never” trust politicians to tell the truth in a tight corner.

Some caveats are needed. Many of those who go into politics today are still motivated by a commitment to service, and UK politics remains much less corrupt than that of many peer countries — which are also experiencing sharp declines in trust in political “elites”. Despite recent impressions, moreover, questions over ethics stretch back decades, and are not confined either to the Conservatives or to Westminster.

“Sleaze” dogged the final days of the last extended Tory government in the 1990s. Labour’s Tony Blair in 2006 became the first prime minister to be questioned by police in office, over a “cash for peerages” scandal, though no charges were brought. And after the widespread misuse of expenses by MPs was exposed in 2009, the percentage of Britons doubting politicians’ truthfulness was even higher than today.

In Scotland, the governing Scottish National party’s finances have been probed by police, and its former chief executive charged in connection with alleged embezzlement of funds. The first minister of Wales, Labour’s Vaughan Gething, has been embroiled in controversy over accepting a donation from a business whose owner was convicted of waste dumping.

Yet the erosion of trust in political ethics has been compounded by several factors under Tory governments since 2016. The Brexit campaign is seen by many as the moment truth-bending in UK politics morphed into the use of outright falsehoods, typified by the claim on Boris Johnson’s bus that leaving the EU would save “£350mn a week” to fund the NHS. In this election, Sunak weaponised a bogus claim that Labour would raise taxes on families by £2,000 — though Labour made some questionable counterclaims on Tory fiscal plans.

A second was a tendency after Johnson became prime minister in 2019 to treat rules as only applying to others — including the readiness to trample on domestic or international law in the messy efforts to agree an EU withdrawal deal. The revelation of Downing Street parties held during Covid lockdown left voters feeling disrespected by government — and ultimately ended Johnson’s premiership. A third factor has been a sense of declining competence of government and the political system to deliver on voters’ priorities.

Restoring stable and effective government could start to rebuild trust. But concerted efforts will be needed, for example, to make party funding, and the system of granting political honours and seats in the House of Lords, more transparent. Tighter controls are still required on MPs’ second jobs, and their business and lobbying activities after they leave parliament. If Labour wins the election, repairing what the NCSR called Britain’s “broken politics” will be among the hardest — but most important — of all the tasks it will face.