An inconvenient truth: what’s really happening to trust in people and institutions

The advent of fake news has made the idea of collapsing trust in institutions, the media, politicians and the Earth’s lack-of-flatness an even more widespread staple of punditry.

There’s one little problem… Saying trust is down is rather like saying the Earth is covered in water. It’s true in part, but also very not true in other parts.

On which point, enter stage right one of the longest-running trust surveys, the Ipsos-MORI trust in UK professions data series. Its new figures came out recently and you’ll notice from the results below how much of the pattern is up, not down.

Indeed, clergy aside you could say that the trend has been consistently up across the board for over five years now. The long term trends since 1983 are also up. We can answer my 2010 question now with a definite ‘yes’.

Rather like the way that turnout has now been rising for four general elections in a row, it’s the sort of trend that gets even less of an outing than my dance skills.

If only we could trust journalists to tell the story accurately…