Politicians trusted by just 4% of Britons as confidence gap widens

Few findings will surprise Westminster more than the revelation that politicians remain the least trusted group in public life.

A decade after Michael Gove's controversial claim that people had "had enough of experts", new YouGov research suggests that while public trust in many professions has recovered or strengthened, politicians have moved in the opposite direction. The survey found that just 4% of Britons trust politicians when they speak about their own areas of expertise, making them by far the least trusted group measured in the study.

The figure places politicians well behind nurses, doctors, scientists, historians and even economists, a profession that was heavily criticised following the financial crisis and became a focal point of the Brexit debate. While economists remain a divisive profession in the public mind, 37% of Britons now say they trust them, compared with 34% who do not. Politicians, by contrast, command almost no reservoir of public confidence at all.

Perhaps more concerning for those in Westminster is that distrust of politicians appears to be growing rather than receding.

Although the proportion of Britons who say they trust politicians has remained unchanged, the number who actively distrust them has increased by seven percentage points since YouGov first conducted the study in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Today, 86% of Britons say they distrust politicians when they speak about issues within their own field of expertise.

The findings arrive during a period of profound political volatility. Public faith in institutions has been repeatedly tested by Brexit, the Covid pandemic, successive changes of government, economic uncertainty and a growing perception among many voters that politics has become increasingly detached from everyday concerns.

What makes the results particularly striking is that they emerge alongside rising trust in many other professional groups.

Nurses remain the most trusted profession in Britain, with 86% of respondents expressing confidence in them. Doctors and local GPs also score highly, while scientists and historians continue to command strong public support. Even weather forecasters, long regarded as a source of national humour, have seen trust levels rise significantly over the past decade.

Politicians, however, remain in a category of their own.

The research also reveals important differences between political tribes. Reform UK voters are consistently more sceptical of experts than supporters of other major parties, a trend that echoes similar attitudes previously observed among UKIP voters during the Brexit era. Among Reform voters, trust in politicians falls to just 1%, while only 11% trust civil servants and 19% trust economists.

The divide is not confined to party politics. The Brexit fault line remains visible almost ten years after the referendum. Leave voters continue to express lower levels of trust in a range of expert groups than Remain voters, particularly economists, scientists and civil servants. Yet while attitudes towards experts have evolved over time, attitudes towards politicians appear stubbornly resistant to change.

For Britain's political class, that may be the most troubling finding of all.

Successive governments have often argued that restoring trust is essential to addressing many of the country's challenges, from economic reform to public service delivery. Yet the YouGov figures suggest that voters remain deeply sceptical of those asking them to make difficult choices.

The result is a paradox at the heart of modern politics. At a time when public policy has become increasingly complex and governments face mounting pressure to explain and justify their decisions, the people charged with making those decisions are trusted less than almost anyone else.

Ten years after Michael Gove's remarks sparked a national debate about expertise, the public appears to have reached a different conclusion. Trust in many experts has survived, and in some cases strengthened.

Trust in politicians, however, remains in remarkably short supply.

Source: YouGov survey of 2,157 adults in Great Britain, conducted 27–28 May 2026.