and we can't have that! politicians doing what the public want them to do, rather than what they decide to do... although, do you really want the average Sun reader telling our politicians to do?

Bring on Europe! at least then I'll be safe from the UK's politicans!

Raymon, London,

who has lost faith? The semi litrits who comment here? If they think they can do better, join a party and get elected

billcarr, turku, finland

Its not just wearing suits - pretending to by 'relevant' by losing their ties makes me mistrust them even more!
Most,. if not all, are totally self-obsessed liars who couldn't make nearly as much money in the real world - which of course is why they are so terrified of referenda. Once real people decided how the country should be run what on earth would politicians do for an income?

Mike Bibbt, St Albans, England -not EU

i havent trusted men in suits since they age of six. the Tory Government sent soldiers to my school in cyprus and threatened to shoot any child that tried to get into the school. the reason for such barbaric behaviour was that during the night somebody had replaced the union jack with the greek flag on the school flagpole.
shortly after the incident i was brought to Britain and the kids at my new school wanted to hear something interesting that happened at school in Cyprus. when i told them the flag incident, they called me a liar and i was sent to coventry. no child could believe that a british government would under any circumstances send soldiers to threaten to shoot at kids.

meliniotis, leicester, uk

These are good arguments.

One problem is that a kludged system has evolved to bias self-validation to attract and elect representatives of the people. That puts a premium on promise over performance whilst avoiding debate as to personal payoff outside an appearance of altruism.

As the comment appearing critical of referenda suggests, it might be time to treat representatives of the people more as servants (well paid in some cases and fully accountable) rather than as an oligarchy of masters.

Perhaps it’s time again to separate an accountable executive sector from unpaid democratic control with better stakeholder monitoring and satisfaction as determinants. The Electoral College systems in use elsewhere and in some historic City-States such as Venice might be worthy of study and possible emulation, as could be some of the practices within the Swiss Confederation.

dr venables preller, Warminster, UK

W.T.Dunkerley: "Who said ' You get the goverment you deserve ? That seems to me to be very much the case."

I have found two quotations that might apply:

"Every country has the government it deserves."
Joseph de Maistre

"In a democracy, people get the government they deserve."
Adlai Stevenson

Frederick Davies, Oxford, UK

Alice Miles is spot on. Politicians have little credibility. All you have to do is listen to the Today program when they - for some reason best known to themselves - interview someone like Alistair Darling who witters on about "...stable banking sytems...", refuses point blank to answer a question with a straight answer and basically talks a lot and says nothing. All I have heard from the lib dems is about taxing just about anything that *might* have an effect on global warming and their idea that the 'super rich' starts at about £70,000 per annum for a family is frankly laughable.
Politics has a place - politicians are a joke.

Alastair Cannon, Bracknell, England

Perhaps one might not give a hoot what a politician wears if what he says has substance, but it so seldom does. Your article is self-contradicting in making an appeal for substance on a criticism of appearance. If it shouldn t matter what they wear, then it shouldn t matter that they wear suits. People don t listen to politicians, because they spend their time in repetitive woffle largely devoid of fact. The referendum is a good example. They constantly woffle about the need for a referendum without giving a single supporting fact, in the context of European business, as to why this would be desirable. The whole political process is a con, and by far the most obvious feature is that a tiny number of politicians get vastly over-exposed, for the obvious reason that they are all singing from basically the same official hymn-sheet, using the same official jargon. How could it be anything but a tedious irrelevance to most people, who - as you implicitly observe - have no say in the matter whatsoever?

Henry Percy, London, UK

Peoples biggest concern is immigration and repeated propoganda from politicians saying they will take measures to control it whilst in reality doing nothing and encouraging it, this has led me to diregard anything they say, but this is not democracy and can only lead to bitterness as people realise there country has been given away with no mandate to do so and as the country becomes concreted over to house all in the world who decide to come here.

sid, ashford,

I am in favour of referendums !! Loads of them ! In order to undo the mess of the last 10 + years of power grabbing by politicians !

I would like to see some new ideas on reforming the party system - which is crammed with patronage and elitism !

More referendums - less politicians !

David L, Marlborough, Wiltshire

Politicians are no more or less untrustworthy, dishonest, bent or corrupt than the rest of the population. Live with it.

Peter FitzGerald-Morris, Rochester, England

I must say I feel the exception to the rule here.I harangue my local MP on a regular basis.I call it feed back.He always appears to take it all in good part ? I trust him to use his judgement as to what needs his action.He serves our local community very well and has not lost touch with the people he serves.Perhaps we are just lucky.

M E Hoult, leeds, Yorkshire

Why don't we trust politicians? Isn't it because the number one priority of those in power is to hang on to it at all costs, and of those currently out of power to grab it however they can? Isn't that what politicians are really concerned with, much more than with schools and hospitals and the like? So why do we keep voting for them? Probably it is a case of better the devil you know. If someone came along and actually believed in what he or she said, and was prepared to stick to it regardless of popularity, and demonstrated that by their actions and not just by words – why, they'd be a revolutionary, and we don't want any of those, thank you! We get the politicians we deserve.

David Walker, Enfield, Middlesex

Trust is like pregnancy or death - either you are, or you are not. You can not be half trustworthy or trustworthy when you are performing your official duties, any more then you can be half pregnant/half dead or pregnant/dead when it suits you.

Politicians liken their role to a pilot of a major airline company and ask "Do you need the pilot to be trustworthy in his personal life in order to fly you safely." The answer is, of course, no. However these politicians are missing the point. Their decisions can have ramifications for years afterwards and effect multiple generations unlike the pilot whose skills are keeping you safe for a comparatively short period of time. Pilots are also thoroughly trained and their performance is scrutinised on a regular basis. I wish politicians would have their performance scrutinised by a higer body who could remove them from post if they performed poorly.

The political system depends on trust. Politicians have lost ours so the system dies

NickT, Aldershot, Hants,

To suggest that the problem with contemporary politics is that it is populated by people who wear suits and are drawn from a small clique is to miss the point. The essential problem lies not with failure to keep up with the latest means for consultation as Alice suggests, but in the morbid desire shown by politicians to be seen to be listening in the first place. There would less disillusion amongst the electorate if all parties offered a vision of what they consider to be a good society. This could then be placed before the electorate and a real choice could be made. In this connection her suggestion for a bit more adventure is correct. In the mid 1980s Labour conducted a campaign called ‘Labour Listens’. This drew the rebuke from Tony Benn that you can”...campaign under a red flag or you can campaign under a pink rose but you cannot campaign under an ear trumpet...” There is much that he and I would disagree about, but in this matter he was surely correct.

Peter Coomber, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Look, it's hardly surprising that no-one has any time for politicians and 'men in suits'. Two recent examples. We were told that a survey had confirmed that the population was broadly satisfied with the service it received from its GP's. Well, I completed that survey and it was a travesty of a survey as the questionnaire was so slanted as to be worthless and allowed no objecative observations on the value or otherwise of GP's. Second, the decision to allow no referendum on the EU consititution simply confirms that the government is unprepared to allow a vote if it is doubtful of getting the result it wants.

Tony Adams, Deal, Kent

Who said ' You get the goverment you deserve ?
That seems to me to be very much the case.

W.T.Dunkerley., Middlesbrough, Cleveland

So politicians wear suits. That's not the problem. The problem is tthat the leaders are all drawn from a tightly knit almost incestuous group who attended the same schools, universities and then were employed as researchers or personal assistants to their chosen party. They live within a cocooned world where focus groups and opinion polls rule. They are interchangeable between parties. They are career politicians who will "tow the party line" to gain advancement even when they disagree with the policy.

By the way I do not want my politicians attempting to be younger than they are or more "hip". I want substance, bottom and gravity from them.

Markham, Huddersfield,

They use referendums in Switzerland, which is why they never closed any railway lines and why our rail system was slashed by about 90%.
I wore a suit once in the last year, to go to a funeral. I wore a tie twice. I'm 56.
I had £100000 in Northern Rock and I withdrew it as soon as I saw that Darling said it was safe. That made me really worried.

ben o'donnell, wokenwell,

Just noticed have you, Alice? You reallsy should get out more - the lumpen proletariat were on to this years ago!

Jeremy Poynton, Fromeville, 51st State

The solution is easy.

Return to the concept of "representation of the people by the people and for the people".

What we have now is representation of self-interest by the self-appointed.

Terry Dell, Weybridge, UK

Alice - great column, which almost demands an an essay-length response on the origins of lack of trust. However, two points. (1) What is extraordinary is that our politicians should believe that there is any reason for us to trust them at all. None of our politicians have demonstrated that they deserve our trust in anything that really matters. (2) Of the many politicians I don't trust, close to the top of the lot is David Cameron. He takes every opportunity to "lose" his suits and ties. I don't trust him any more as a result.

Anthony, Ashford, Kent

Politicians are servants os the people. It's the people that elects them!

janine, paris, france

Well done Alice - you finally caught up with the rest of us... but it's not the suits, it's the fact we no longer trust them. Indeed - many seem them as our main enemies. I for sure do. Brown frightens me

Jeremy Poynton, Frome, Somerset

Political debate changed when Kennedy defeated Nixon in a face-to-face Presidential debate, due to the suit he was wearing. From then on, the TV media has to a great extent replaced Parliament as people's perception of politics, with the interviewer playing the part of the opposition, short of saying to the hapless politician,"you are lying, tell us the truth". People know the names of Paxman and Humphrys, how many of the enlightened 60% can name 4 members of the Opposition front bench, let alone the Cabinet?
Add the spreading viruses of spin and polling, replacing the truth and referenda. In turn, we have become more cynical, questioning those, once considered to be our "betters".
The recent Northern Rock debacle proved the point, a gigantic U-turn from " we are not there to underwrite the mistakes of financial institutions, to we guarantee the depositors money "
On this occasion the electorate spoke and their representatives were forced to listen, power still lies with the people

M. Fishman, London,

The complaints here "go double" in the USA.

Don Loughlin, Bellingham, USA / Washington

Alice Miles' repeated expressions of misandry suggest there is something amiss with her upbringing, or she has read all the wrong books. It is not just men in suits who have lost our trust, but women in suits also. And, since the late 1970s, we have certainly had more than our fair share of the latter. Of course, their fanfared arrival on the political scene was supposed to make us all more democratic and "civilized." Now, such a suggestion would only attract howls of mirth. As the for the Banking problem; the source and roots of our woes can be found within the 'Square Mile' and the US Federal Reserve system: the Rothschild effect.

Errol Flynn, Chester, England

I think that the problem is that politics doesn't engage people. There are thousands of people, myself included that are waiting for real debate, to be inspired, to feel part of the process. The Westminster Village works against all of that, and though I know that constituency MPs generally work hard, the TV Politicians-talking heads NEVER rock the boat, and call that leadership. I want debate between parties where the choices are distinct. I want politics to matter to me - it doesn't at the moment. All I do is religiously pay my taxes and take the squeeze in my pay packet. I would love to feel as though my voice is being heard, but it isn't right now.

And THAT is the real problem IMHO.

Will, Suffolk,

Trust hasn't evaporated recenty. No one - not even the most ardent and loyal Labour supporters - ever believed a single word of anything Harold Wilson ever said. Ever!

eric campbell, harrogate, uk

Dear Jasper, I thought that was their role. Am I missing Something?

major, n yorks,

Nice one Jasper

Chris, Dudley,

The Swiss government has seven people at its head, whose collective job is to ensure the will of the Swiss electorate is enacted in government policy. They do not apply dogma (the referendum is the ultimate tool to remind a government of where it sits in the grand scheme of things); they have no grand political or social experiments to sneak through in the gaps between elections; and they have the respect of the public they serve. The general view is that the government is there to serve the people, as opposed to the UK where the reverse applies. While each member of the Bundesrat is a character in their own right, none would place themselves above the people they represent. If you want to see true democracy in action, spend a week or so here. Plus, the scenery is wonderful. Oh, and the trains work.

David Masu, Zürich,

Alice I'm afraid that you dont really understand "democracy"
very well. You ask why politicians dont have referendums on a wide range of subjects. Simple. They already know the majority view on almost any subject via opinion polls, its just that they are not prepared to go along with a majority view they dont share. Take immigration. Ask people what they want and immigration would be almost non-existent, but this is not what big business and the politicians want. Same with capital punishment. A good chance it would get majority support, so no referendums. Politicians can claim public support for anything but have a referendum and the games up. "Democracy" is what big business and politicians want,
what the majority want is called "Populism". One of the greatest myths of "democracy" is that it somehow reflects a majority view. As for suits, well people who regard themselves as "elite", like pollies and bankers like to stand out from us plebs.

John , Sydney, Australia

My sentiments exactly ! Thank you for writing so clearly and lucidly...my thoughts are a mirror of this.
Also, lose the suits...definitely !

Get them into skirts, let the public have a good laugh at them, at least they'll get noticed, even if they do not have good legs !

Yours, a 'cross dresser' from Swindon !

R.Kilby, Swindon, Wilts

The world is an uncertain, fast-moving place and the binary of the parties' political thought has little impact on it, simply because it draws on long dead meta-narratives and irrelevant managerial practices that use a language totally unsuited to appealing to a populace or running a country. The media's questioning of Boris Johnson's candidacy for London major captures the mood of earnest debate that makes current politics boring. He isn't serious enough so shouldn't get the job.

Well, serious discourse is seriously boring and limits the creative potental of humour's insistence on seeing multiple persectives. Politics should be fun, and not in the infantile, public school boyish humour of the House, but in its attempts to serve the multiple requirements of its electorate, no matter how paradoxical. Facts, figures, statistics, earnestness sends us to sleep; debate on the absurdity of one-dimensional policy makes us laugh. That is why we take Paxman seriously. We enjoy him so much!

Richard , Sydney,

Referendum ? Nasty Swiss habit, not the way parliament does things at all. The trouble with referenda is they reduce politicians to mere servants of the people.

jasper, chelmsford,