A lack of trust in British politicians is the biggest reason non-voters are choosing not to head to the ballot box, a poll has found.
More than half of those who wouldn’t vote in a General Election said they would do so because they don’t have faith in our elected representatives.
The YouGov poll, carried out on behalf of campaign group the Sortition Foundation and shared exclusively with Metro, also found that almost 80% of people wouldn’t trust MPs to tell the truth.
The results, gathered before the date of the vote was announced last month, suggest that politicians elected in July have a lot of work to do if they want to rebuild confidence.
On a scale of one to ten, 55% of respondents answered 10 when asked how likely they were to vote – meaning they would definitely do it.
But 24% of the more than 2,000 people in the survey gave an answer of ‘five’ or less. A tenth said they were at ‘zero’, indicating there was no way they would be voting.
Among those least likely to vote, 52% said this was because ‘I don’t have trust in politics generally’.
The next biggest reason given was ‘Because whoever wins won’t make a difference to me’ on 36%, followed by ‘Because no party represents my views’ on 20%.
When asked if they would trust an MP to tell the truth, 78% said no, while 20% said yes. The same question asked about a member of the House of Lords led 23% to say they would trust them and 65% of people to say they would not.
The Sortition Foundation is campaigning to replace the upper chamber of parliament with a ‘House of Citizens’, which would comprise of ordinary members of the public called to serve in a jury service-style system.
According to the poll, the rolling citizens’ assembly was the preferred option for the House of Lords among a list of possibilities which included keeping it as it is.
In December 2022, a report by the former prime minister Gordon Brown calling for the abolition of the House of Lords was backed by the Labour Party.
The idea outlined in the report was a ‘democratic Assembly of the Nations and Regions’, which would be elected on ‘a regional basis across the United Kingdom’.
Such a chamber, Brown suggested, should be ‘three quarters smaller than the present Lords, at around 200, and more in line with second chambers elsewhere’.
It’s currently unclear if the reforms will get a mention in the party’s soon-to-be-published election manifesto, as reports suggest it may not be considered feasible within a first term in office.
There is speculation that Starmer may choose to pack even more peers into the chamber to ensure Labour’s agenda is not thwarted by the considerable number of Tories on the red benches, if he is elected PM.
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