December 3, 2024
Badgeland author Steve Rayson introduces his new book, Collapse of the Conservatives: Volatile Voters, Broken Britain and a Punishment Election, published today by Bavant.
The new Labour government has inherited a daunting set of challenges, but perhaps its most difficult inheritance is the collapse in the public’s trust in politicians. Alongside resuscitating Britain’s faltering economy and improving the country’s crumbling public services, the Party must also grapple with the challenge of restoring faith in the nation’s political system.
The last Conservative government became synonymous with dishonesty and unfitness for government. The behaviour of Johnson, Hancock and Cummings, who contravened Covid-19 rules during the pandemic, had a corrosive effect on public trust. From 2021 to 2023, the percentage of the public that trusted politicians to tell the truth in a tight corner fell from a low of 12% to just 5%. By the time Boris Johnson left office in 2022, fully 76% of the public believed he was untrustworthy.
High-profile incidents such as the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, the Grenfell Tower fire and political scandals such as Partygate all eroded public trust in government. By 2024, the number of people saying they ‘almost never’ trusted the government to place the country’s needs above the interests of their own party had almost doubled from 26% in 2019 to 49%. During the last general election, Ipsos tracked a group of voters throughout the campaign to capture their reactions to key events. The researchers who ran the survey found the public had a “complete distrust of politics and politicians”.
The previous Conservative government did not simply trash their own reputation for competence and trustworthiness; by 2024 the public overwhelmingly distrusted politicians of all parties. An Ipsos survey found that just 9% of people said they trusted politicians to tell the truth, the lowest in over 40 years.
Over the last decade, the electorate has become starkly disillusioned, resulting in an angry, anti-politics mood among voters. High levels of public distrust have destabilised the electoral landscape, firstly, by undermining attachments to political parties and undermining settled party preferences, which has increased instability. Distrustful and cynical voters are far more willing to switch parties between elections.
Distrust also creates greater suspicion and cynicism about the intentions of incumbent governments and a desire to punish those who don’t deliver on their promises. This increasingly takes the form of ferocious anti-incumbent tactical voting, such as that which allowed the Green Party to overturn a 24,000 Conservative majority in North Herefordshire.
Political distrust also creates opportunities for populist parties to appeal to voters on the basis that the political and establishment elites cannot be trusted, a tactic used by Reform, who are now polling at close to 20%. Finally, political distrust can lower levels of engagement and voting: the turnout in 2024 was just 59.8%, the lowest in over 20 years.
The Labour Party’s manifesto promised to rebuild trust by ending the sleaze, scandal and broken promises that marked the Conservative government. Keir Starmer pledged to uphold “the highest standards of integrity and honesty”. However, the early rows about Starmer and his team accepting free clothing and tickets while cutting the winter fuel allowance for pensioners appear to have reinforced the public’s cynical views about politicians.
Questions have also been raised about the Party’s honesty regarding the Budget. During the election campaign, analysts and commentators criticised the dishonesty of both main parties when it came to the need for higher taxes and borrowing. Sam Freedman claimed that anyone who went through the numbers could see that £40bn of additional taxes was required and that the fiscal rules had to be amended to allow more borrowing, and yet the election was fought “with everyone pretending it wasn’t true”.
Prior to the election, Rachel Reeves categorically stated that her plans were fully funded and there would be no additional tax rises beyond those the Party set out in its manifesto, “no ifs, no ands, no buts”. On 30th October 2024, she unveiled the biggest tax-raising budget since 1993, and increased public spending by £70bn annually, funded through tax increases and borrowing.
The thin veneer Labour has used to justify its lack of openness during the campaign was that once in office, they discovered that things were worse than they could ever have imagined. Instead of making arguments about the necessity for additional taxation and borrowing during the election, Labour is now seeking to persuade people retrospectively. The danger is that voters view this approach as evasive and dishonest. Tom Clark of the Resolution Foundation believes it may have further damaged public trust in politicians. Worse, it may have reinforced the public’s cynicism that all politicians are dishonest and untrustworthy.
Labour won a landslide in 2024, but landslides only happen when the ground becomes unstable. One might imagine that after a landslide, the ground settles, and similar events are less likely to occur in the future. The reality is that slopes that have suffered landslides, have plants with shallow roots making the soil even more unstable. The ideological roots that previously stabilised voters and attached them to political parties have been weakened by political distrust. The Labour coalition was wide but shallow. An estimated 3.8m of Labour’s voters did not vote for the Party in 2019, suggesting that around 40% do not have a deep attachment to the party.
High levels of political distrust have made the new electoral landscape increasingly volatile, with voters ready to vote tactically to punish incumbent governments that fail to deliver. When people were asked how they would judge the success of the Labour government after five years, the three top answers were:
- How much they reduce NHS waiting lists
- How much they lower the cost of living
- How much they lower immigration
An angry electorate will severely punish the government if it fails to deliver on these three core issues. However, even delivering on these issues may not be enough in an era of political distrust. Starmer has to develop a way of leading that makes people believe, for the first time in a long time, that those in power understand the challenges ordinary people face and are genuinely looking out for them.
Steve Rayson’s new book Collapse of the Conservatives: Volatile Voters, Broken Britain and a Punishment Election is available here.
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