Political analyst Professor Sir John Curtice, FRSA, is interviewed by RSA Chief Executive Andy Haldane about the growing crisis of trust in politics and the shifting dynamics of voter behaviour. In a wide-ranging conversation, Curtice discusses how globalisation has reshaped political allegiances, argues that improving government performance, rather than excessive regulation, is key to restoring trust, and highlights the vital role of civil society organisations in shaping policy.
13 minutes
If you want to improve trust, you need to improve the performance of government. Focus on this. Trust will largely follow.
The RSA’s Andy Haldane speaks to Fellow, political analyst and polling guru Sir John Curtice about the growing crisis of trust in the political landscape and how changing social demographics are complicating the forecast for future elections and government in the UK and beyond.
Andy Haldane: John, welcome to the RSA. I wonder whether we might start with the Donald Trump presidency. How are pollsters making sense of the Trump phenomenon? From the last US election, it looks like the polls are still playing catch-up.
John Curtice: No, fundamental misconception. People described Trump’s success, including Trump himself, as a landslide. Point one about Trump is that the relationship between rhetoric and the truth is not necessarily one-to-one. But it’s also something that journalists themselves said… and this is people being confused by, or misinterpreting, the result of the electoral college for the result of the outcome.
The average lead for Kamala Harris in the final opinion polls in terms of the overall national vote was estimated by most of the aggregating websites as one point over Trump. In the end, Trump had a one-and-a-half-point lead over Harris. So, an error in the lead of two and a half points – that’s pretty good by standards.
Oh that the pollsters in the UK had been anything like as accurate as the polls in the US. The error on the lead in the polls in the US was about two and a half points, the error on the lead here [in the UK general election] was of the order of seven points.
Haldane: How is voter behaviour changing both in the US and UK?
Curtice: There has been a change in the character of support for the Democrats and Republicans, which is not dissimilar to the changes we’ve seen here in the wake of Brexit. We have seen Brexit being supported by people who are older, more socially conservative, and who have less in the way of educational qualifications.
It’s a division that is arguably the product of globalisation and the fact that education is now so much more important in labour markets. That creates two groups in society: educated young graduates, who can benefit from freedom of movement and who love living in a diverse society; and older people with fewer educational qualifications for whom immigration is something that happens to them, rather than something that they’re likely to profit from.
In the US, Trump is articulating a similar division. But there wasn’t a big change in the character of support for the Republican Party in 2024 as opposed to 2020 or 2016. The big change kicks in really with 2016. So, the truth is the polls aren’t entirely accurate, but they do provide a basis for understanding how, both here and on the other side of the water, the demography and sociology of voting behaviour have changed.
The late Peter Pulzer, former Gladstone Professor of Government, famously said in the late 1960s, “Class is the basis of British politics; all else is embellishment and detail.” There is now basically no significant relationship between social class and how people vote, or if there is, it is the obverse of what Pulzer was talking about. The core Labour vote, insofar as there is a core Labour vote, is the young middle-class professional living in London. It’s not the Durham miner.
Haldane: Help us make sense of that. If class has become less of a differentiator across the political spectrum, what is going on there?
Curtice: Globalisation has created new divisions. These are partly about economics, but they’re also about culture. They’re about the difference between those who are comfortable living in a place like London and those much less comfortable about a diverse society. It becomes a debate about the extent to which society needs to impose certain moral codes, to require people to learn a language, to acknowledge a flag, etc, all things that, some argue, will create the social cohesion that’s essential for society to function.
When we talk about cultural wars, the argument is about values in our society today. It’s not just about equality. The traditional divide, where social class was the demographic division, was an argument about equality and inequality. Now we have a second divide, between those who essentially are social liberals and who feel that people should be able to make their own moral choices and are much more concerned about the ability of individuals to express themselves – and social conservatives, who are looking for protection, both from cultural and economic change.
Our politics now in terms of voting behaviour is shaped as much by that second division – it was always there, but now it’s become as important as the argument about equality. It’s not that the old divisions have disappeared; it’s that another layer has been added, and, to some degree, that layer cuts across existing divisions. Therefore, you end with the class division disappearing.
Haldane: It’s early days, but the rise of Reform in the UK looks like a real thing. If you speak to constituencies in the north of England, where Reform came second in the last election, there has been a cratering of support for the government – and Reform has been the big beneficiary.
Curtice: At the moment, it’s no more than a possibility that the British two-party system may finally be on its last knees. One of the fundamental failures of the Eurosceptic right, has been to develop a stable party structure to articulate the Eurosceptic point of view. The challenge that Reform needs to meet now is, can they become a party on the ground everywhere?
Haldane: We hear a lot about ‘the cult of the strong leader’ and how that is on the rise. Is that true? Is there a sense that personalities may trump (small ‘t’) policies or parties when it comes to how people vote?
Curtice: It’s very difficult to disentangle the two. Leaders who have an ability to reach charismatically towards the public are certainly a valuable asset and are largely in short supply and arguably in shorter supply than they have been historically.
Jeremy Corbyn had a certain kind of charisma. Boris Johnson was never that popular as a national figure, but he was popular with the Brexit side of the country, and he was hated by the other side. Margaret Thatcher was highly charismatic, but some people didn’t like her. Tony Blair was highly charismatic and a brilliant speaker. Then you come to today’s crop: Rishi Sunak, no charisma, no narrative; Keir Starmer, no charisma, no narrative; Ed Davey, no charisma, no narrative; John Swinney, nice bloke, no charisma; and you have Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage has charisma.
Farage is brilliant at articulating the deep pessimism that many people feel. He says in ‘human speak’ how people feel and what their problems are. He’s then able to articulate a story about where he wants to take the country. Now, you may not like that story, but there is a story – he can do narrative, and people listen.
The one thing that politicians have to be able to do is to defend their party and articulate their party’s messages to the broader public. We are relatively weak, I think, particularly in the mainstream parties, of people who have that quality.
Haldane: So, we have, in many countries, a relatively politically untethered blue-collar working class. In the UK, historically, they have swung to Labour. Some of them will have come back to their homelands, but with no real conviction. So, if Nigel Farage becomes the tribune for the working classes, wouldn’t this suggest we could be in for a rupture?
Curtice: We could. It depends on what you mean by rupture. In a sense, we already had a rupture. I think one thing to say is that Reform is exploiting a niche market. It’s a fairly large niche market, but virtually everybody who votes for Reform is willing to back Brexit.
Now, that’s still just over 40% of the British public, but it is equally only just over 40% of the public, and there’s probably a limit to what proportion of that Reform can pick up. The government’s difficulties over the economy and the NHS are crucial. If the economy does start to take off, this side of 2028 and 2029, and if the waiting times have gone down, then Labour may well be able to recover.
The problem is that arguably some of the most important decisions Labour made, they made in opposition. These were the decisions to rule out rejoining the single market and customs union and the decision to say there’d be no increases in direct taxes on individuals. They are both now proving very considerable constraints.
There is now basically no significant relationship between social class and how people vote.
Haldane: I’d love to do a bit of crystal ball gazing about where we might be going. If we are in a ‘democratic recession’, which I take to mean trust in the political process is not as we would wish –let’s say that’s true…
Curtice: It’s certainly true. One of the things that the British Social Attitudes survey did in the last election campaign was to lob this grenade that said levels of trust in politics and politicians are at an all-time low in the UK.
But it’s not a continuous trend. It does go up and does go down. Elections are always good for trust. The fact that people have been able to go to the polls helps to renew their trust and confidence, but the post-election measures we have are the lowest we have had. This is partly to do with the failure of Brexit in the eyes of leave voters. Brexit was good for trust because the people who voted for Brexit were historically the people who tended to be less trusting. People with degrees always tend to be more trusting of politics and politicians.
Younger people always tend to be more trusting than older people. When you get older, you get a bit more cynical. In the wake of Brexit, people who voted leave, you saw their trust become markedly higher in 2020, but then that’s all gone. So, the failure of Brexit in the eyes of leave voters and their disappointment with it has undermined their trust. Remain folk are still unhappy. The fact that there were issues of integrity about the last administration also added to it.
Haldane: If we are in some mini or maxi depression, how do we get out of this politically?
Curtice: The first thing we should not do is try to regulate our way out of it. Basically, our political class are unable to think collectively. So, whenever a politician makes a personal mistake, something that’s deemed to be improper or unethical, their opposition will criticise them and say, “he should resign” or “she should resign”. The truth is, if you look at the reasons for resignations, politicians are much more likely to be brought down because of personal failure than because they screwed up on policy.
We don’t hold our politicians to account for the job that they do. We hold them to account for their behaviour, but the political class have created that environment, and, because we now have more regulations, more regulation means more trip wires for people to fall over. So, if politicians want to improve trust, they need to stop attacking each other when it comes to issues of trust.
If you want to improve trust, you need to improve the performance of government. Focus on this. Trust will largely follow so long as you don’t create trip wires to engage in political warfare.
Haldane: In terms of repairing this trust deficit, hauling us out of political depression, it’s often the case that things the public dislikes nationally, they quite like locally. Is decentralisation part of the answer?
Curtice: There is a fundamental difference between the debate about devolution in Scotland or decentralisation in England. In Scotland it’s a question about the legitimacy of the UK union, and it is about the extent to which governmental decisions might be fundamentally different, might be pursuing a different narrative, a different strategic objective from the government in London. That’s also partly true of Wales.
I regard the debate on devolution [in England] as a debate essentially about local government change. And then you get into an argument about whether reducing the number of councils and councillors and seemingly concentrating powers in the hands of mayors… whether that’s devolution or centralisation. Certainly, the current government is looking to mayors to implement their strategy. They are not looking to mayors to say that, well, Liverpool can do one thing and Manchester can do another.
It’s about decentralisation as an operational strategy for saying, well, the implementation of a broad strategy might be done more effectively if the micro-level decisions are made at a lower level. There’s some argument for that. But it isn’t about making fundamentally different political choices, which, of course, is what the Scottish government did.
Younger people always tend to be more trusting than older people. When you get older, you get a bit more cynical.
Haldane: You’ve been a Fellow here for 32 years. What can we, as RSA Fellows, do? How can we contribute to improving the lot of the UK, either economically or socially or maybe politically? Because we’re an apolitical institution. What is the role of social change organisations?
Curtice: All political systems need civil society organisations that will provide them with analyses and ideas, particularly once you’re in office for a while.
Whereas most think tanks have a particular orientation and, therefore, have a particular network of people whom they might talk to, the RSA has a large Fellowship and, therefore, ought to be able to tap into diverse expertise in a way that other organisations can’t. You are adding to the mix of evidence-based policy analyses and looking forward. The RSA has expertise from a wide range of professional fields.
Have I got the job? Can I be your successor?
Haldane: You absolutely can. The job is yours.
Sir John Curtice is Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde and a Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Social Research; he also serves as President of the British Polling Council and is a regular media commentator on both British and Scottish politics. He has been a Fellow of the RSA since 1993.
Andy Haldane is Chief Executive Officer at the RSA.
Francesca Jones is an editorial and commercial portrait photographer based in Cardiff, Wales.
This article first appeared in RSA Journal Issue 1 2025.
