Why Do We Trust The Government So Much?

Most people don't seem to like the Government, and trust is at a record low. Yet we still want to see more from Government. Why?

Most people don’t seem to like the current Government very much. This is an anecdotal observation, but one which seems so overwhelmingly evidenced that I cannot help but make it.

I don’t like the Government very much either, but my distrust is more fundamental. I think of power as a bit like a medieval flail: difficult to wield and even a small rupture of over-enthusiasm can do a great deal of, often unpredictable, damage. The only logical conclusion I can make is therefore that power should be limited to the greatest extent possible: in other words, necessarily constraining which functions the Government executes and the extent to which they are funded to do so.

The country at large doesn’t seem to agree. While 77% of the UK public now express some level of distrust in governments to place national interests above party politics - a record high¹ - support for increased taxation and government spending has only fallen to 40% in 2024, down from 46% in 2023. Despite such historically low measures of trust, this does not seem to correlate with a more fundamental distrust of the government’s activities. If we do not trust the government to tell the truth and do the right thing, why do we continue to demand that they should have more control over our lives?​