Correlation and causation

So, Brits have lost faith in institutions. One possible cause:

My interpretation is straightforward. As the UK public has been fed what is a very obvious lie over the EU they have lost faith in politics, the media and the institutions of power that support the operations of the state. Is there any surprise in that?

Of course, there is more to this loss of trust than that one issue. But is it pivotal? I think it might be, because when senior politicians – of all parties – so obviously lied about this issue and are now in denial about it they made lying acceptable elsewhere. The consequences are obvious.

Another, non-solanum, possibility is that greater experience of more intrusive government has led to less confidence in intrusive government. More knowledge leading to less faith.

You know, on the basis that the Curajus State is actually crap at doing things?

15 thoughts on “Correlation and causation”

  1. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    I do sometimes wonder what the government could possibly have done over the last 3 years to destroy any remaining faith in it.

    It’s a puzzler.

  2. “My interpretation is straightforward” and a statement of opinion unbacked by any evidence

  3. BiFR, just 3 years? I always feel it’s more of a steady state of ongoing disappointment for..decades now..

  4. “As the UK public has been fed what is a very obvious lie over the EU …”

    Was that Cameron’s £9million leaflet saying stay in?

  5. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Grikath, I agree, but I don’t think an oatensibly democratic government has ever, let alone with malice aforethought, wreaked the wholesale destruction of the last 3 years. And this time they all did it.

  6. As we’ve almost (but not entirely) got tired of pointing out, we have a courageous state: a government who isn’t afraid to ignore all the evidence and plough on regardless. Surely it would be much more timid to just go where the evidence points?

  7. “My interpretation is straightforward”- As the UK public has been fed what is a very obvious lie over the EU EVERYTHING THEY HAVE EVER BEEN TOLD THROUGHOUT THEIR ENTIRE LIFE, they have lost faith in politics, the media and the institutions of power that support the operations of the state.
    Is there any surprise in that?

    No.

  8. Hitler’s was ostensibly democratic, as is Putin’s.

    Hitler came to power in early 1933. Kristallnacht was at the end of 1938. That’s almost 6 years, not 3.

    Granted there were plenty of ways before then that the Nazi government slowly turned up the heat on their public, but I think BiFR’s point is the speed at which our current government has so comprehensively wasted an 80-seat landslide majority, including the historic labour-voting heartlands.

  9. We were talking about America yesterday, which is seeing a similar collapse in trust in their institutions.

    Yesterday a New York court convicted a man called Douglass Mackey for the crime of being a funny pro-Trump guy on Twitter.

    Hey, look at the clock… it’s still Who/Whom time.

  10. Steve

    For me it was their failure to make sufficient progress on the Trans Agenda. Goddamit we need paedophiles and groomers to have direct access to children and we need it now…

    Just jesting of course…

    Re: Murphy’s mutterings – his ignorance of EU history is total. It’s as though the 80s never happened for him. What an insufferable blowhard.

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