Politicians are among the lowest rated public figures when it comes to trust from the general public. According to the pollsters Ipsos MORI, in their 2018 Veracity Index, politicians rank just above advertising executives in the UK. In the US, they came dead last, behind cars salesmen as reported by Forbes.
Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t surprise anybody. People are so used to being lied at by politicians, that they tend to get into trouble when they keep their promises (look no further than Donald Trump in the US).
But politicians have always been liars, and bureaucracy is slow, cumbersome and inefficient (see my previous post: Brexincompetence for a snapshot), so why should it matter?
Well, politicians are employed by the tax-payer. Any regular-Joe employee who is so useless at their job, would be fired on the spot. Politicians seem to get re-elected. Let’s see two clear examples: The US and the UK. Let’s start with the latter.
In 2016 there was a Brexit vote. One simple question: “In or out?” Out won. You can argue whether it was a smart decision or not, in fact everybody has been doing that for the last 3 years, but the result is in. Everybody knew what they were voting for: Leaving the Single Market, leaving the Customs Union, leaving the European Court of Justice, leaving the Common Fishery Policy, leaving the Common Agricultural Policy, leaving the Free Movement of People… in short, Leaving the EU.
Government and Parliament have spent over 3 years, sometime last week the UK had its 1000th day since the referendum, yet nobody is an ounce of knowledge wiser as to what will happen. Seriously, there are 600 MPs who had one job to do: Get the UK out of the EU. What have they spent the last 1000 days doing? obviously not taking the UK out of the EU, and they haven’t been doing anything else for that matter.
How can the public trust an institution whose two main parties won 80% of the votes on manifestos that clearly stated that they will abide by the will of the people and enact the mandate of the referendum, when after 1000 days, not only may the UK not leave on the deadline, but as things stand… it may not leave at all.
What kind of message does this send to John and Jane Q. Tax-Payer around the world?
Across the Atlantic, the picture is not much better, ranking below cars salesmen, the faith in politicians has reached calamitous proportions. This isn’t meant to enhance after the Mueller Report got published exonerating President Trump and his entire campaign of collusion with Russia on the 2016 presidential elections. That is 22 months, and countless millions of Dollars down the drain, yet Democrat politicians have vowed to continue investigating.
This type of investigations, suck resources from everywhere: they need money that could be used in a plethora of better ways, detracts government’s time from governing, congress’ time from legislating, when they should be doing their job.
The problem is that whenever party politics get in the middle of a government, it is the general public that pays the price.