Trust

Voting for a politician involves a certain amount of trust unless one is prepared to vote for a donkey. Few people will vote for a politician that they simply do not trust and Ed Miliband should have taken this into account before appointing Woolas to his Home Office team. Following today's decision Miliband's appointment of Woolas now looks wrong and will have damaged public trust in Miliband himself. Trust is much more important than many politicians appreciate. Even if they do appreciate its importance the majority of them treat trust in a cavalier fashion. Why were Churchill and Thatcher such outstanding PMs? because people trusted them to a greater degree than otherwise.Why was Thatcher so hated by those who disagreed with her?  Because they believed/trusted her to do what she said she would do. Why did mostly everyone eventually suss out that Blair was a charlatan? Because he could not be trusted. Will Cameron be trusted? I hope so but the jury's still out. Despite the belief of too many politicians voters are not fools. Although being a generous lot they give the politicians the benefit of the doubt or simply ignore the deceits in the belief the other side are more deceitful they can nonetheless see through the veils, aided and abetted as they now are by the likes of Guido Fawkes (http://order-order.com/), Iain Dale (http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/), His Grace Archbishop Cranmer (http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/), Wat Tyler (http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/) and other bloggers. The insight bloggers provide into our politicians, warts and all, is something else. Such insight did not and does not exist to nearly the same degree in the press or television, probably since, unlike bloggers, journalists are part of the same system as the politicians through the lobby. This golden internet age is a boon to voters and can only become more significant in the years to come.