Apathy towards, and mistrust of, politicians and government is nothing new. Throughout the ages, from Juvenal's Satires to Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, the motives, failures and scandals of what is perennially seen as an ineffectual and self-serving political class have been laid bare through humour, mockery and scorn.

Although admittedly never far from the surface, the issue of trust, or lack of, has, once again, rather unedifyingly, and despite a multitude of other pressures, hogged the nation's attention in recent weeks thanks to what one of my colleagues pithily described as ‘wrongs and gongs'.