Survey shows that just 22% trust UK government ministers to tell the truth

From the BBC:

Public trust in senior politicians has fallen in the last two years, according to a survey carried out for the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

The survey suggests 22% of people think government ministers tell the truth – down from 27% in the 2006 survey.

Committee chair Sir Christopher Kelly called the results “deeply disturbing”.

And he said a cause was that greater openness “meant people become aware of things which previously were carried on but they didn’t know about”.

Un-named UK cabinet minister admits lying to the public

The BBC recounts a refreshing admission from an un-named UK cabinet minister about his conduct in public office. “There just comes a point where you say, ‘I can’t go on lying”, he is reported to have said; “you can’t go on saying ‘I think Gordon Brown is the man to lead us to victory’ when you don’t believe it”.

Interestingly, this admission of dishonesty appears only as a sideshow in the BBC’s story, the main focus of which is the growing disquiet among Labour MPs over Gordon Brown’s leadership. It’s almost as if we have got so used to our politicians brazenly lying to us that it only becomes newsworthy when they decide to start telling the truth.

It might seem strange, after all the lies told in the run-up to the Iraq war, in which thousands have so far died, that the un-named minister should choose this moment to draw a line in the sand over issues of public integrity. 

But one thing has changed since 2003. Whereas the lies over Iraq have done little harm, so far, to the people that told them, Labour’s elite knows that failure to resolve the current crisis over Gordon Brown’s leadership will likely leave them out of work and out of power within 2 years.