Polls show that the UK public trusts the EU more than the UK Parliament

The British public has more trust in the EU than the UK Parliament, a new poll has found in a remarkable reversal of a decades-old trend.

Confidence in the Westminster Parliament has fallen by 10 points to just 22 percent since the Brexit referendum.

Although the EU’s popularity among Brits has lagged behind Parliament since the early 1980s, trust in Brussels has risen seven points to 39 percent since Brexit.

The findings come from an analysis of more than 20 countries by the Policy Institute at King’s College London (KCL) as part of the World Values ​​Survey – one of the largest social surveys in the world.

In further evidence of Brexit regret, just 24 per cent of people said they were “happy” with the UK leaving the bloc. About 49 percent said they were unhappy about it.

Professor Bobby Duffy, Director of the KCL Policy Institute, said: “Trust in Parliament has halved since 1990; We are among the least likely countries to have confidence in the government out of more than 20 countries in the study.”

He added: “Our confidence in the EU has also recovered after Brexit and now we have much more confidence in it than our own parliament and government.”

Senior Tory MP David Davis said The guard that the change was due to the “whiny, awkward, bitchy row” over Brexit in Parliament in recent years. The ex-Brexit secretary said the tabloids had stopped “kicking Brussels all the time”.

It follows comments from Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) Chair Richard Hughes, who said the impact of Brexit on the UK economy was on the same “magnitude” as the Covid pandemic and the energy price crisis.

Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) will be 4 percent lower than it would have been if the country had stayed in the EU, the government’s financial watchdog confirmed.

According to KCL, recent results show a clear split of views, with the pre-war generation (34 percent) and so-called baby boomers (28 percent) more likely to trust Parliament, and younger millennials (17 percent). ) and Gen X (19 percent) less likely.

In the latest World Values ​​Survey, the UK ranks behind the likes of Iran and China in terms of public trust in the police.

The UK is in the bottom half of countries when it comes to trust in the police. Only two-thirds (67 per cent) of the British public surveyed said they had a high or fairly high level of trust in policing, compared with 87 per cent in 1981.

The latest UK data was collected in 2022, before a damning review was released that found Britain’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police, to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.

“The UK has long prided itself on the strength of its institutions – but the British public is not as confident as it used to be and we are now more negative than many other countries,” Prof Duffy said.

“Some institutions are doing better because our court system is rated relatively highly and the civil service is doing much better than our political institutions,” he added.

“These trends are important. The pandemic has shown how much we rely on public cooperation in times of crisis, with trust being key to this, and the Met Police review concluded that “public consent has been fractured.” We must work hard and fast to build public confidence.”