Trust in politics is hard earned and easily lost. It has been less then five months since the current Labour Government came into office, and already it very much feels like they have lost the trust of the British public. This is notable given that Labour won a record large majority in the July general election.
Saying anything and making false promises to gain power not only undermines trust in those doing it, such as Labour did, but also in the whole political process. This means other mainstream political parties can get tarred with the same brush. We can all be accused of ‘being all the same’ and we can potentially see as a result, political extremists on both the far left and the far right, benefitting from distrust in mainstream politics.
The Labour party in opposition spent years opposing every difficult decision the Conservatives needed to take, and tried to portray themselves as people who would never do anything bad to anyone. During the election campaign they deliberately kept their intentions quiet and once elected, they made up out of thin air, a hole in the public finances. This was to justify their real intentions of hiking up taxation, targeting groups like pensioners and farmers as well as borrowing to the hilt.
They did promise energy bills £300 a year cheaper but all we’ve seen is a 10% increase in October, and then announced last week, a further 1.2% rise to come in January. Warnings exist of further rises after January, from these already very high levels.
There is real public anger out there. So much so, that a petition submitted on the parliamentary portal on Saturday afternoon, reached one million signatures by 24 hours later on Sunday afternoon. This petition says: “I would like there to be another General Election. I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.”
While there won’t be another election soon, the rush to sign is a significant indication of the level of distrust created by the Labour government.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
27th November 2024
