Cleaning up our fetid politics is Keir Starmer’s toughest task yet. Here’s how he can do it, fast | Polly Toynbee

Venality, bribery, bullying, sexual and financial disgrace: all these must be swept away to win back voters’ trust

Winning the election was almost easy compared with the next task Keir Starmer has set himself. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our age,” he has said, and it will define him. Fail, and he risks the rampant right and the righteous Greens and Liberal Democrats devouring his huge majority. The country purged the most corrupt and decadent government of modern times, but Labour’s victory was almost a byproduct of that vengeful impulse. How do you reclaim trust that is so lost that politics has never been held in such low repute?

Everyone knows the reasons why deep cynicism greets doorknocking MPs. Examples of Westminster venality, bribery, bullying, sexual and financial disgrace are too many to list, too wearily familiar to need recounting. That odour of pocket-lining self-interest was extra-shocking in a government stripping down public services while voters struggled to get by. Unjustly, people often make little distinction between the parties. That’s the mood Starmer confronts. Britons are among the least trusting of their politicians in the western world, with trust at a record low thanks in part to anger over Partygate lies. Nearly 80% are dissatisfied with how Britain is governed.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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