A legitimacy crisis loomed over British politics as we approached the general election in July last year. Research by King’s College London had found that just 24% of Britons had confidence in the British government, the third lowest among countries they surveyed, and the British Social Attitudes survey had found that a record high number of Britons ‘almost never’ trust the government or politicians of any party. As Professor Sir John Curtice put it, the public was “as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government”.

Who could blame us? Living standards eroded rapidly following the Great Recession as the cost of living increased, and the sense that no matter what we do or who we vote for, these trends would continue and life would worsen had become embedded in the British psyche. A new government was an opportunity to begin to reverse these trends, but eight months into Sir Keir Starmer’s government it appears Labour are intent on deepening this crisis even further.

The crisis of legitimacy in British politics is rooted in the erosion of two key pillars that uphold public confidence in our governing institutions and democracy itself: input legitimacy, the extent to which we feel that we are empowered to shape the policies of government, and output legitimacy, the quality of the results government gets. Both are necessary foundations of the legitimacy of our governing institutions.

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Rebuilding confidence in British governing institutions was never going to be easy. It was always going to take time and require serious reform to re-establish both input and output........

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