The number that could decide if Burnham keeps his job

Senior Fellow at NatCen, home of the British Social Attitudes survey As Andy Burnham stared straight into the Downing Street camera and promised “to make politics work better”, he was unaware of a number which may well decide if he can keep that pledge and his job. It is not the number 10 – either North or South. That number is 83. To understand the power of that figure, you need to go back to 1973, and a survey conducted for the Royal Commission on the Constitution. A forerunner of the long-running British Social Attitudes (BSA) series, the 1973 survey tried to find out if people at that troubled time wanted to make politics work better. In the wake of mass strikes, power cuts, job losses and Ted Heath’s declaration of a state of emergency, 49 per cent of people agreed that Britain’s system of governance needed quite a lot or a great deal of improvement. The BSA team has just asked the question again. Today, that figure stands at 83 per cent, the highest level ever recorded. It is not a statistic we should shrug at. The 83 per cent reveals a frighteningly wide sense of disillusionment about how power operates in contemporary Britain. It lay behind that very first promise Andy Burnham made as Prime Minister. “We have not been good enough and we need to be better,” he said, before pledging: “We will be.” The scale of his challenge is found in the number 83. Another question which the BSA survey has posed since the mid-1980s asks whether people trust British governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interest of their own political party. It is a way social scientists measure people’s confidence that the system is fair and honest. Back in 1986, only 38 per cent of people thought governments would do that “just about always” or “most of the time”. The British have always been sceptical about the motives of the political classes. The latest BSA data reveals that just 9 per cent of Brits think the same today, the lowest proportion ever recorded. A shocking 45 per cent of voters reckon governments would “almost never” put nation before party. Our new Prime Minister and all politicians should be profoundly alarmed. When Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street two years ago, almost the first thing he said was that he intended to “restore service and respect to politics,” later adding that “the fight for trust is the battle that defines our political era”. Normally, new governments enjoy a honeymoon period in which trust levels rise. Starmer was not afforded that luxury. In fact, as his successor settles into No 10, the new figures suggest disappointment has deepened. Andy Burnham should look into the detail of the crisis of confidence he inherits. The BSA data finds a strong relationship between lack of trust in government and worries about the cost of living and the NHS. There is, though, another factor which is critical in understanding the collapse in political trust. Andy Burnham promised to address it in his first major speech after winning the Makerfield by-election. The word he used was “agency”, the sense voters have that our democracy gives them a degree of control over the decisions which affect their lives. Do you agree with the statement that “people like me have no say in what the government does?” The BSA team has been asking that since 1996 and seen how the proportion strongly agreeing with that sentiment has reached almost record levels. Most recently it hit 26 per cent, double what it was 20 years ago. Survey after survey suggests supporters of Reform UK feel that lack of agency far more than any other party. It is a political force powered by a sense of powerlessness. “We will take power from out of here and carry it to every postcode in the land,” the new Prime Minister promised in Downing Street. Decentralisation and devolution lie at the heart of Burnham’s plans, but many former prime ministers have worn the “power to the people” T-shirt before. Last year, following Keir Starmer’s Devolution White Paper, researchers from the National Centre for Social Research headed to Sussex to explore people’s attitudes towards greater local and regional control. The findings should be of interest to Burnham and his team. After having had the process explained in some detail, the greatest concern was that devolution would still fail to return power to forgotten places, that local people would be failed again. The Sussex residents wanted to see far greater citizen engagement, ensuring ordinary people’s voices could be heard even when politicians were not canvassing for votes. The data suggests scepticism about the political classes runs to cynicism and contempt in many parts of our kingdom today. “That is our challenge,” Burnham said outside No 10, “to make politics work”. He might reflect on the number 83. Mark Easton is Senior Fellow at NatCen, home of the British Social Attitudes survey