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Trust in both UK Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has dropped, Edelman survey found.
“We are a disunited Kingdom: a country that is seen as increasingly unfair, less tolerant and headed in the wrong direction,” Ed Williams, Edelman’s U.K. and Ireland chief executive and EMEA vice chairman, said in a statement published Monday.
A U.K. supplement to the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, which will be published in full Tuesday, found that 69 percent of British nationals were “angrier about politics and society since the referendum,” prompting one in six Britons to “have fallen out with relatives or friends over the issue of leaving the EU.”
The U.K. is set to leave the bloc on March 29, but it remains unclear whether Prime Minister Theresa May will be able to get her Brexit deal through parliament.
In the Edelman survey, one in five believed the U.K. government “had done a good job negotiating” the country’s departure from the bloc. Among Leave voters, 43 percent said they were “unhappy” with “the direction of national travel,” while 82 percent of self-proclaimed Remainers feel the same way, the statement reads.
Around two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents said they felt Britain was “on the wrong track,” with six in 10 respondents reckoning that Brexit is the biggest challenge facing U.K. businesses.
Among Conservative party voters, around 60 percent believe the country is heading in the right direction, versus just 20 percent of opposition Labour-leaning respondents.
“For those who identified themselves as Conservative supporters, trust in Mrs May has fallen 10 points to 68 percent, whilst for those who identified themselves as Labour supporters, trust in Mr. Corbyn has dropped 12 points to 56 percent,” the study found.
Again, around 60 percent of respondents, irrespective of how they voted in the referendum, said they felt the government doesn’t listen to them — painting a picture, according to the statement, of a society “that for the most part feels ignored and abandoned by its political class.”
“The consequences are clear: as a country we see our politicians and our political leaders as out of touch, and we lack faith in their ability to heal the divide,” Edelman’s William said. “Instead we are looking increasingly to business and to our employers to lead and to act with social purpose.”
The U.K. survey supplement consisted of 20-minute online interviews with more than 2,000 respondents between December 18 and January 7.