There is an air of deja vu about this election. Trust and confidence in how Britain is governed is as low as it has ever been – just as it was shortly before the last election five years ago.
Yet the circumstances that have given rise to the public’s pessimistic outlook this time are very different from 2019.
In the weeks and months leading up to the last election, voters’ confidence in politics and politicians was shaken by parliament’s apparent inability to decide the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
Now, according to the latest British social attitudes (BSA) report from the National Centre for Social Research, the public mood has darkened further.
In 2019, 34% said they “almost never” trusted “British governments of any party to put the needs of the country above the interests of their own political party”. Now, as many as 45% express that view – a record high in response to a question that has been asked regularly over the past 30 years.
Meanwhile, in 2019, 79% said that the system of governing Britain was in need of “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of improvement. This represented a record high for a question first asked 50 years ago when the country was facing a worsening inflationary........