{"id":3060,"date":"2019-12-19T17:30:54","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T17:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2022-06-17T16:55:49","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T16:55:49","slug":"the-2019-general-election-whats-trust-got-to-do-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3060","title":{"rendered":"The 2019 general election: what’s trust got to do with it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our newly elected prime minister Boris Johnson is infamous for finding it difficult to tell the truth<\/a>. The general election campaign was littered with untruths. Although it\u2019s hard to be certain, one study<\/a> suggests that many of the Conservative party\u2019s social media interventions were misleading. So, does being trustworthy not matter anymore? Can you win, and not be trusted or trustworthy? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trust of politicians and Brexit<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

We would not rush to that view. Making\na trust judgement for a voter is a complex process driven by a variety of\nfactors. If you say you trust someone to deliver something, what are the\ncriteria you are likely to use? Research suggests that citizens commonly ask two\nquestions: Does the leader have the competence\n<\/em>to deliver? Do she or he have the integrity<\/em>\nto mean what they say? Trust judgements can therefore develop a specific \u2013\nrather than general \u2013 focus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is where trust did matter in 2019.\nOn delivery of Brexit, Boris Johnson is trusted. He can<\/em> deliver and he wants<\/em>\nto keep his word. If leaving the EU was your number one issue, then the leader\nof the Conservatives passed with flying colours. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the figure below shows, it was in the area with most Leave supporting\nvoters that saw the biggest shifts to backing Boris. The blue and red note\nConservative and Labour performance respectively, with the dashed and dotted\nlines the linear fit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Labour\u2019s leader had a lot more trouble in generating trust on the Brexit\nissue. Many doubted Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s ability to negotiate a new withdrawal agreement\nand hold another referendum all within a few months of taking office. At the\nsame time, insisting that on the biggest issue of the election he would be\nneutral seemed to lack credibility \u2013 especially on such a polarised issue. Some\nsuspected he was a closet Leave supporter; others suspected he was a closet\nRemainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many just thought that Labour\u2019s position was vacuous, reflective of weak\nleadership. Corbyn failed both the competence and integrity trust tests. Others\ngo further<\/a> and argue that this lack of clarity fostered\ndistrust of Corbyn and his policy intention, creating a lose-lose type of\nsituation where both Leavers and Remainers seemed to believe he was\nmisrepresenting his position, with both sections of a divided electorate\nseemingly believing he would ultimately end up acting against their interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labour\u2019s trust problem<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Beyond Brexit specifically, trust judgements also have a general\nflavour. These factors also shaped the election outcome. Labour\u2019s trust problem,\nespecially in towns and suburbs, stretches back a long way, and as the table\nbelow shows only in major cities did Labour outperform the Tories in the 2019\nelection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Settlement Type<\/strong>\n <\/td>\n Cons. vote share<\/strong>\n <\/td>\n Labour vote share<\/strong>\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n City\n <\/td>\n 30.7\n <\/td>\n 51.2\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n Large town\n <\/td>\n 44.5\n <\/td>\n 39.1\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n Medium town\n <\/td>\n 51.6\n <\/td>\n 31.6\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n Small town\n <\/td>\n 53.1\n <\/td>\n 25.3\n <\/td><\/tr>
\n Community\n <\/td>\n 48.7\n <\/td>\n 27.5\n <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is the sense of neglect created by the rather strident embrace of\nglobalisation in the Blair and Brown years that drove economic dynamism in the South\nand cities but had a negative impact elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Ed Miliband nor Jeremy Corbyn were viewed as having the\ncompetence to be effective leaders. The perceived cultural, metropolitan and\nnarrowness of Corbyn\u2019s world view reaffirmed the view that Labour was no longer\nto be trusted to support and care for large swathes of what were previously\nheartlands in the East Midlands and North East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Conservatives too still face a general trust challenge. As the prime\nminister put it<\/a> after his victory thanking Northern voters for\ntheir support: \u201cEverything that we do, everything that I do as your Prime Minister,\nwill be devoted to repaying that trust\u201d. \u2018Getting Brexit done\u2019 formally is\ndifferent to delivering the benefits of Brexit to those communities that have\nbought the mantra of \u2018taking back control\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The modest adjustment to previous austerity constraints on public\nspending and services mean that changing peoples\u2019 lives for the better will be\ndifficult to deliver. So far, there is a vacuum in Conservative policy in\naddressing these issues. They have won the trust battle, but may struggle to\nwin the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future of trust in politics<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

And what of the state of political discourse? We do not know for sure\nthat social media messaging works, but we can probably assume that the strategy\nof the Conservatives to focus on the narrative rather than fact checking will\nbe copied. Politics looks set to a have a trust deficit for a while yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the future for parties to accept that citizens do not believe them in\ngeneral; and for citizens to accept that politicians are not trustworthy? The\nlatter is particularly an issue for our normative understanding of politics. It\nleads to the strange position that if politicians are expected to be\nuntrustworthy \u2013 to lie \u2013 then the honest politician may be perceived to lack integrity.\nThat voters may be more willing to trust the untrustworthy, because at least\nthey are authentic about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another path for trust decisions is that voters focus on specific not general judgments. Choosing a leader because they can identify one important issue on which they might deliver. If the trust formula trust is: A trusts B to do X. The question is: what will be the next X?<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our newly elected prime minister Boris Johnson is infamous for finding it difficult to tell the truth. The general election campaign was littered with untruths. Although it\u2019s hard to be certain, one study suggests that many of the Conservative party\u2019s social media interventions were misleading. So, does being trustworthy not matter anymore? Can you win, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":3063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1390,1395,1399,1396],"tags":[1606,1534,1651],"coauthors":[1471,1635,2231,2232],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","category-comment","category-elections","category-uk","tag-conservatives","tag-labour","tag-trust"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/The-2019-general-election-whats-trust-got-to-do-with-it-6996026717_f8df56ce28_k.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}