Trusting The Politicians

The publication of the Prime Minister's dossier on Iraq seems to have had little effect in swinging public opinion. According to our poll for ITV News, published on Wednesday, only a quarter of those who would support British involvement in an attack on Iraq say the dossier had "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of influence on their decision - hardly more than the 18% of opponents who say the dossier influenced them against. While 16% feel they are more in favour of military action than they were a week ago, 12% are less in favour. Only 30% agree that "The information in the dossier has persuaded me that military action now needs to be taken against Iraq", even though 54% agree "The information in the dossier convinces me that Iraq poses a threat to international peace". The government's supposed trump card seems to have been a bit of a damp squib.

Events like the looming possibility of war emphasise the vital importance of public trust in governments and politicians, trust which could once, perhaps, have been taken for granted but which in recent years has been almost entirely lacking. As MORI's regular "veracity" poll shows, over the last two decades the public has consistently been reluctant to believe what their leaders tell them; only journalists have ever scored below "politicians generally" and government ministers in this measure of public trust.

Q Now I will read out a list of different types of people. For each, would you tell me whether you generally trust them to tell the truth or not?

 

160		Nov	Apr	Jan	Feb	Mar	Feb
160	1983	1993	1997	1999	2000	2001	2002
160	%	%	%	%	%	%	%
Government Ministers
Trust	16	11	12	23	21	20	20
Not trust	74	81	80	70	72	73	72
Net	-58	-70	-68	-47	-51	-53	-52
Politicians generally
Trust	18	14	15	23	20	17	19
Not trust	75	79	78	72	74	77	73
Net	-57	-65	-63	-49	-54	-60	-54

Source: MORI/BMA/The Times Base: c. 2,000 British 18+ (c. 1,000 in 1997).

There has, it is true, been a significant and sustained - though, in all conscience, slight - improvement in the standing of government ministers over the past few years, that coincided with and almost certainly reflects the replacement of the Conservative government by a Labour one in 1997. This is not to suggest that more of the public are necessarily convinced of the probity of Labour ministers in the abstract than of Conservative ones, but perhaps reflects the constant vilification in the press of John Major's government, which has not (yet) been repeated under Tony Blair's administration.

Of course, the general question of trust in politicians cannot be separated from the specific problem of "sleaze", which from the early nineties has been an all-too-present theme. The Conservatives were the first to be widely characterised as "sleazy", but even at the time, before Labour's election to power, many of the public were reluctant to distinguish too strongly between parties - all politicians were to some extent tarred with the same brush. Once in power, Labour's reputation slipped further. By early 2002, just 22% of the public thought this government is "less sleazy" than that of John Major, while 18% thought it more sleazy.

Q The previous Conservative Government under John Major was accused of sleaze. Do you think the current Labour Government is more or less sleazy than the previous Conservative Government, or is there no difference between the two?

 

160	25-26 Jan 2001	15 May 2001	21-26 Feb 2002
160	%	%	%
More sleazy	12	10	18
Less sleazy	30	27	22
No difference between the two Governments	54	56	54
Neither is/was sleazy	1	1	1
Don't know	2	6	4

Source: MORI/Mail on Sunday/The Times Base: January 2001: 1,001 adults 16+, interviewed by telephone; May 2001: 1,019 adults 18+, interviewed face-to-face, in home; February 2002: 1,069 adults 18+, interviewed face-to-face, in home.

A separate Gallup poll series from 1998 asked "Do you think that the Government has, on balance, been honest and trustworthy, or not?". From a starting point in January 1998 of 56% saying the Government had been honest and trustworthy, by September 2000 the figure had fallen to 35.8%. (See Anthony King and Robert Wybrow, British Political Opinion 1937-2000: The Gallup Polls, Politico's Publishing, 2001).

The perception of sleaze is probably not the original cause of the low standing of politicians, but has had great impact in confirming and consolidating the bad impression. Sleaze matters to the public, who expect high standards of behaviour - which they admit.

Q Do you think that we, the public, are right or wrong to expect MPs to behave according to a higher standard of moral behaviour and financial honesty than ordinary people?

 

160	%
Right	70
Wrong	26
Don't know	4

Source: MORI Base: 820 British 18+, 10-11 January 1994

Of course, in any objective measure sleaze and corruption are far rarer and on a far less serious scale in the UK than in almost any other major European democracy; but the public perception that sleaze is a serious problem cannot be doubted. The public impact of even the few cases which received wide notice, blown up by blanket media coverage, seems to have been immense. (Indeed, most of the British public seem to take a harsher view of politicians in Britain than they do of those than on the continent. In a MORI poll for the Mail on Sunday in October 1999, respondents were asked to select statements they felt applied to Britain or France: 63% said they thought "It has a lot of political scandals" applied to Britain, and only 36% to France.)

But probably the underlying problem is not the reality of sleaze or the prevalence of accusations (which owe much more to the climate in the media than either the level of misbehaviour or of public concern about it), but to the public's more general willingness to ascribe motives of self-interest to politicians. More than half the public in two MORI surveys during the 1990s said they felt that MPs put their own interests before any others, and another quarter thought they put their party's interests first.

Q In general, whose interests do you think MPs put first - their own, their constituents', their party's or their country's?

 

160	1994	1996
160	%	%
Own	52	56
Party's	26	27
Constituents'	11	7
Country's	5	5
Other	1	1
No opinion	5	4

Source: MORI

It is hardly surprising, given this level of distrust, that the public are unwilling to accept uncritically the government's statements on matters of great import such as the need for war with Iraq.

Examination of two recent surveys of British opinion puts distrust of the political establishment into context. One, the European Commission's Eurobarometer survey, compared trust in a number of different institutions; the other, by MORI, compared trust in a shorter list of institutions with trust in four well-known High Street retail brands.

We should note in particular in the MORI survey the high standing of the four High Street brands, by comparison with the government. While the instinctive reaction of many of the British public is to mistrust big business, this has not prevented many large companies from building a trust relationship that can overcome that instinct. Politicians need to be able to do the same.

 

Q I would now like you to think about how far you trust certain institutions and companies. Using this card, please could you tell me how far you trust each of the following. 160 <-- Trust --> Neither /nor <-- Distrust --> Don't know Trust Distrust Net 160 Comp- letely A great deal A little   Comp- letely A great deal A little         160 % % % % % % % % % % % The National Health Service 7 35 28 8 12 5 3 1 71 21 +50 Charities 6 31 30 15 11 4 2 1 67 17 +50 Large companies 1 11 34 30 15 5 2 3 46 21 +25 The government 2 9 28 16 19 15 10 1 39 44 -5 The media 0 3 17 16 26 23 13 1 21 62 -41 Brand A 3 24 27 32 4 1 1 9 53 6 +47 Brand B 4 28 29 26 4 1 1 6 61 7 +54 Brand C 2 19 28 31 6 2 2 10 48 10 +39 Brand D 6 28 31 25 3 1 1 5 65 5 +59 Source: MORI Base: c. 1,000 British adults 18+, July 2002. Q I would like to ask you a question about much trust you have in certain institutions. For each of the following please tell me if you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it. 160 Tend to trust Tend not to trust Net 160 % % % The army 82 11 +71 Television 71 25 +46 The police 65 29 +36 Radio 65 24 +41 Charitable or voluntary organisations 63 24 +39 The United Nations 59 24 +35 Justice/the British legal system 53 39 +14 The British parliament 47 43 +4 The Civil Service 45 40 +5 The British government 43 49 -6 Trade unions 41 44 -3 The religious institutions 38 47 -9 Non-Governmental Organisations 31 39 -8 Big companies 22 65 -43 The press 20 75 -55 Political parties 16 76 -60 Source: Eurobarometer 56 (European Commission) Base: 1,000 adults in Great Britain and 312 in Northern Ireland, 22 October-19 November 2001.
We should also note that the political parties are held in greater contempt than even the Press, and trusted by barely one in three of those who trust Parliament or the government. Trust in the NHS, though, stands in stark contrast to distrust of the government's will and ability to maintain and improve it. (See the MORI Delivery Index.) As, perhaps, with sleaze, the long-repeated accusation of one political party against another that the NHS was "not safe in their hands" seems to have rubbed off as a general indictment of all parties and politicians. (It is perhaps no coincidence that these two issues have fuelled the election of Britain's first two independent MPs for half a century.) Perhaps most relevant for current events, though, is how many more of the British public trust the United Nations than trust their own government - a trust also reflected in the MORI/ITV News poll, in which 62% had at least a fair amount of confidence in the UN to "deal responsibly with world problems", while only 41% put the same degree of trust in the American government, and in which there was far higher support for a UN-sanctioned war than for a war without UN approval. So it looks now as if Mr Blair, if he wants to convince his own countrymen, must first convince the UN. He wouldn't have had this trouble four years ago, at the height of his "honeymoon", when the public were still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.	160	160

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