A question of trust

ULTIMATELY, much of politics comes down to trust.

For example, some big claims were being made in the Brexit referendum, claims that were very difficult for your average man or woman on the street to test reliably.

So which side did you believe?

Remain had an army of economic and business experts coming out supporting their case, all warning about the damage a vote to leave would cause.

In the end, though, the majority of people opted to trust the promises being made by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage – and their own instincts and in-built perceptions.

But what happens to them, and politicians in general, as the key pledges start to unravel once the vote had been counted?

There is a long-running poll carried out by Ipsos MORI which has asked about trust in the UK in different professions since 1983.

While in 2015, 90% of people trusted doctors to tell the truth, 86% teachers and 80% judges, just 21% of Britons trusted politicians to do so.

And for those that argue it was the media 'wot won it' for Brexit, and in a salutary lesson for all hacks, journalists got only a 25% rating.

At no point since 1983 have more than a quarter of the public ever trusted politicians to tell the truth. The lowest trust score was recorded in 2009 in the wake of the expenses scandal, when only 13% said they trusted them.

So why the innate scepticism?

That is not answered in the poll, but presumably memories of broken promises live long in the public consciousness – how often have you heard it said that 'they never do what they say anyway'.

And each time a pledge is broken, or a different scenario unfolds to the one the politician outlined, that trust index takes a knock.

In Guernsey, we were promised by the last States that it would return a balanced budget – it left a £24.5m. deficit.

Every year Health agrees to a budget, only to overspend it.

We were assured the States had got spending under control, only for a recent announcement about cutting overtime and double-checking recruitment to indicate that there was room for this in the past.

An air of distrust is generated every time a report is released, with projects that have vague timescales and budgets which include large contingencies, with a grand claim once completed that they were on time and on budget and then no public follow-up to show that everything is working as planned.

The last States over-promised and under-delivered, creating an environment that puts this one immediately on the back foot in the eyes of the public.

It would be interesting to see the results of a local trust survey – there is obviously a closer connection between the electorate and their representatives here, which might help, or it might hinder because when things go wrong, everyone knows and everyone has an opinion.

The World Economic Forum conducts a Global Competitiveness Survey which also asks respondents how they rate the ethical standards of their politicians – 1 is extremely low, 7 extremely high.

In its latest, Singapore topped the ratings with 6.3.

Out of the 34 OECD countries, the lowest scoring with 1.8 was Italy – famed for sex scandals and political corruption. Venezuela came bottom with 1.3.

In those terms, things are positively rosy for the UK, which ranked 22 with 4.5.

But measuring yourself against the yardstick of 'well, at least it's not as bad as…' really isn't the way to go.

Of course, it is not only politicians who face an increasingly sceptical public – the way big businesses and economic experts were ignored by many in the Brexit vote shows that.

The proliferation of social media has been a great asset in allowing borderless communication. But it also poses a great danger in fostering crackpot theories and letting them take root.

Just like believing in fairies or ghosts, some things become a leap of faith, a gut feeling that gathers cultish momentum, one that needs no real evidence.

If you repeat a lie often enough it takes on the air of truth.

Perhaps some of it is just a wish that things were somehow different, a counterpoint to the at times rather depressing reality.

Any government needs to be aware of the disconnect with large swathes of the populace.

Remember that in Guernsey, 19,000 people who could have done so did not even bother to sign up to the electoral roll, and then, of those who did, around 8,500 did not vote – in the end more than half of the eligible adult population did not want a say.

Of course, delivering on the promises is the best way to rebuild trust.

But it is not just about vacuous words declaring success.

The States is promising much more data and key performance indicators to keep track of how things are going.

It needs to keep pressing the communication button, to keep the dialogue going – dialogue that needs to be real, not catchphrases, buzzwords and sweeping platitudes.

It is also promising scrutiny with teeth. That is another key component in ensuring public trust – there will always be a healthy scepticism of the message from the centre and that needs to be tested by someone people have faith in.

Long gone are the days where people simply doffed a cap to their elected representatives.

Some are much more likely to speak down to a politician than look up to them.

While those in power may lament that changing relationship, it is the new reality – and when it does not go to extremes it can be a healthy thing.

Testing and challenging.

The States needs to engage with that. It is problematic when the States becomes inward-looking, dismissive of those outside its circle. That happens as a term rolls on, when politicians begin to get an 'always know best' attitude, and turn their attention to winning over their colleagues rather than the population.

Politicians need to keep the conversation going.