How the UK lost confidence in its institutions

The UK has long prided itself on the strength of its institutions – but the British public are not as convinced as they once were, and we are now more negative than many other countries.

New data from the World Values Survey, one of the largest academic social surveys in the world, shows that confidence in parliament has halved since 1990, and was at just 22 per cent in 2022. That’s half the level seen in Germany and miles behind Norway, where 70 per cent say they have confidence.

We’re also among the least likely of more than 20 countries in the study to have confidence in the government, with again only a quarter saying they do, on a par with Italy.

Confidence in the police has fallen sharply, particularly in recent years, and especially in London – for many good reasons, as laid bare in the Casey Review of the Metropolitan police. Nine in 10 of us said we had confidence in the police back in 1981, now it’s down to 67 per cent in the UK, 55 per cent in London – and just 44 per cent of the youngest generation, Gen Z, agree.

And, out of 24 countries, only Egypt has less trust in their press than we do in the UK. A tiny minority of 13 per cent say they have confidence in the British press, which collapsed from 29 per cent in the 1980s and has remained incredibly low since.

Some institutions do fare better, with our courts system relatively highly rated, and the civil service coming out much better than our political institutions. Trade unions have seen a gradual but steady increase in public confidence, to 36 per cent.

Ironically, one of the few institutions that has seen rising confidence levels in the UK in recent years is the EU: we’re much more likely to have confidence in it than our own parliament and government.

Beneath this overall picture there are some very clear differences and drivers of change.

Some of the decline in our perceptions of our domestic political institutions will undoubtedly be a reaction to the current versions of them among particular segments of our population.

For example, a big driver of the fall in trust in government is collapsing ratings among Millennials. This is not surprising given the number of policy decisions that have gone against them in recent years, and the new, very steep, generational gradient in party support: just 20 per cent of Millennials consider themselves Conservative party supporters, compared with half of Baby Boomers. 

But there are also signs of a wider generational problem, with Gen Z coming into adulthood with dire levels of trust in the police, the courts and the press. This is our first measure of this generation and could shift again as they age, but it’s a really challenging starting point for the legitimacy of these institutions in the eyes of the coming generation.

There is a widespread misconception that younger generations are always more distrusting, but the more common pattern is each enters adulthood with trust levels on a par or even higher than older generations – which is then lost through repeated disappointment. Starting out already deeply distrustful is a real concern.  

There are also significant variations between nations in the UK, which reflect some of the key challenges of keeping a post-Brexit UK together. Perhaps not surprisingly, Northern Ireland is particularly negative about all of their political institutions, ranking near the bottom of international league tables on their views of parliament, government and political parties.

Scotland also stands out as particularly positive about the EU, with higher levels of confidence than countries that are still in the EU, including France and Germany, and over twice the level of confidence they place in the UK government.

These low or declining confidence levels in our national institutions matter. The pandemic showed how much we rely on public cooperation in times of crisis, making trust in the institutions asking us to do extraordinary things crucial. The Casey Review of the Met police emphasised how vital that confidence is to more day-to-day activities, and how badly that’s been damaged, concluding that “public consent is broken”.

Some of our confidence challenge is no doubt cyclical, related to a particularly unpopular government when the fieldwork was conducted in 2022. Some will also be related to the extraordinary period in UK politics and society we’ve been through, with Brexit, Covid and the deep economic challenges that followed.

But some is long-term and endemic, which only becomes clear from these long-view international studies that show how much we’ve changed and how other countries are doing. It’s all too clear that we need to work hard and quickly to shore up public confidence, and particularly to better understand and engage our youngest generations.