How mistrust and inequality have led to the Brexit dilemma

These days more and more topics I think of writing about remind me of my earlier articles — not surprising perhaps, as I’m in sight of my 250th column. Today I go back to one from 2011, on the relationship between trust and inequality, and I do so in the context of the current global political scene.

In Britain a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union resulted in a vote to leave that was partly seen as a cry against an uncaring and untrustworthy Westminster establishment.

In the US Donald Trump is promising to make America great again by thumbing his nose at anyone with a track record in Washington — “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted” among others.

And in several European countries right wing politicians, including Britain’s UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have been scoffing at the way their countries are run and for whom.
In all these countries we have been seeing a serious further erosion of trust in mainstream politicians. What has caused this? First the gross distortions in how issues are now presented by opposition challengers as they sneer contemptuously at incumbents, wildly promising instant miracles to be delivered by them immediately on being elected to replace the useless characters in power.

Then, such challengers particularly prey on the anxieties of the millions of voters who have been left behind, if not left out. Their jobs have disappeared — either to automation or to lower cost environments — and at best their salaries have stagnated.

The ones seen to be benefiting at their expense are the bankers and the better off generally, those also perceived to be unduly influencing government policies. So now to my earlier article.

In January 2011 I wrote about The Spirit Level, Why Equality is Better for Everyone, a fascinating book which revealed that in societies where wealth is poorly distributed lower levels of trust prevail.

READ: Brexit: Both silver lining and a benign concern to Kenya

Trust cannot thrive in an unequal world, asserted the authors, who showed that income inequality is the prime mover of mistrust, having a stronger impact than rates of unemployment, inflation or economic growth.

The implications of the extensive research on the consequences of inequality are stark, I reported then, supporting the thesis that one must work at reducing inequality or suffer dire consequences. I wrote too about the survey that asked people around the developed world whether they agreed with the statement “Most people can be trusted”. They found major differences between countries, with the highest percentages in Scandinavia and the Netherlands (Swedes came top, with 66 per cent), and the lowest (at 10 per cent) in Portugal.

And there was a fourfold difference between the most and least trusting of the US states, not to mention that trust had noticeably declined in America in just the period when inequality had risen rapidly. Trust leads to cooperation, I read in the book.

In the US, for instance, studies showed that people who trusted each other were more likely to donate their time and money to helping others. Trusters also tended to believe in a common culture, held together by shared values, and felt that everybody should be treated with respect and tolerance.

It is sad that populist politicians have capitalised on the anger and ignorance of those left behind to paint rosy pictures of illusory Utopias that speak of “Making America great again”, and “Taking back control”. Fear of foreigners, resentment of wealthy bankers, mistrust of the establishment generally — surely these are insufficient ingredients with which to build healthy societies. In so many countries we are seeing increasingly negative campaigning, expressed in ever more abusive language, that along with the temporary euphoria generated in some seriously diminishes respect for the offending candidates by others.

All this is exacerbated by a sensationalist and often partisan mainstream media and completely uninhibited social media. It’s too easy simply to claim that leaders are “disconnected” from the common person, and “out of touch” with their plight and their needs.

Awfully difficult

The realities are that while politicians campaign in beautiful poetry, governing unfolds in far more mundane prose, as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo once told us. In these times making government work is awfully difficult, whoever is running the show and however well-intentioned they may be.

But the mud that is being liberally hurled is sticking to those at whom it is aimed. Or to put it another way our trust in our leaders, whether in America or Europe or elsewhere, continues to crumble. Even as too many of them are getting us to distrust one another.

Many have pointed out that the solution to combating all this superficially appealing but low quality bluster is education. All over the world there is a big push to transform the content and style of teaching and learning in order to do a better job of meeting the needs of this 21st century, and so that fewer people get left behind.

But it will continue to be a long, hard battle as many countries strive to improve on both their inclusiveness and their international competitiveness. In this globalised interlinked world of survival of the fittest it is all too apparent that too many people are unfit to fill the jobs available, whether in America or Britain… or Kenya.

Yet it is only if we help those at the bottom of the pyramid to benefit from a shared prosperity, reducing our massive and increasing inequality which is the prime source of low trust, that we can build a more informed and civilised society.

This requires exceptionally inspirational leaders, who are trusted only thanks to being trustworthy and who can persuade those at the top of the pyramid that unless they worry more about those at its lower levels we are all doomed.

I read recently that these days the ignorant are swaggeringly confident while the enlightened are filled with gnawing uncertainty. So let the enlightened become bolder, and find ways of being far more persuasive. Including here at home.

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