June gives me a wry smile when I ask her if she trusts politicians. But it soon fades.
“They promise you the Earth, and you don’t see anything. And it’s soul destroying,” she says.
I meet her and husband Joe as they tuck into fish and chips in the town’s oldest chippy, the Peabung, which has served this town since 1883.
June tells me she really wants to trust politicians but they “just mess it up every time”. I ask Joe if he thinks politicians care about him? “Well hopefully they do. I’m not sure really.”
He stops to think for a moment. “I don’t really trust politicians,” he says.
Joe is ‘not sure’ politicians care about people like him
The findings of a Sky News/YouGov poll are stark and echo how voters like June and Joe feel. The findings suggest voters no longer believe what politicians say.
In some places, there appears to be a deep loss of faith in British politics.
Shannon Donnelly has nearly 200,000 followers on TikTok and has used the platform to develop her Grimsby-based business selling personal safety equipment, such as panic alarms. I ask her if she trusts politicians.
“No – I think things like Brexit has massively changed people’s opinion. I won’t forget when they said all that money would go to the NHS.
“Now we seem to be in a worse position, but they still expect us to trust them. It’s crazy.”
Shannon Donnelly
The percentage of Leavers saying they “almost never” trust the government has leapt by 33 points (from 23% to 56%) since the last election. This is twice as much as the increase for Remainers.
Shannon’s lack of trust impacts on her livelihood and she says she doesn’t know which way to turn.
“For the business, obviously, it’s important to look at what they will do….
