The Owen Paterson fiasco grabbed the public’s attention for weeks.

The Prime Minister shocked the nation by trying to remove the independent oversight of MPs behaviour after Owen Paterson fell foul of the rules.

The outcry against this move forced the Government into a screeching U-turn.

The story is fading away from the newspaper headlines now, but it’s left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

We conducted a survey to gather our supporter’s views on the state of British politics. We received over 4,200 responses.

The survey revealed that our supporters are deeply unhappy with the state of British politics. 98% of them believe that British politics is corrupt, and 74% of our supporters said that both the political system and individual politicians are to blame for the corruption in British politics.

The Times Newspaper also asked their readers whether they believe that British politics is corrupt and a shocking 89% of 12,000 of their readers said yes.

The public’s negative outlook on the state of British politics is unsurprising after the past two years. We have heard numerous stories of the Government using a ‘VIP Lane’ to give Covid-19 contracts to companies with links to the Conservative party without the usual scrutiny or competition.

We also asked our supporters whether it is realistic to expect corruption-free politics in the UK. Only 71% of our supporters said that corruption-free politics is realistic. 19% of our supporters have so little trust in our political system that they believe corruption-free politics is an unrealistic aim.

This is a sad state of affairs.

Here’s what some of you said about corruption-free politics -

• “The UK claims to be a democracy which means the government and politicians should serve the people of the country, not themselves.”

• “I am a social worker and subject to regulations governing my professional behaviour. I adhere to those standards and expect that politicians should too.”

• “With adequate regard for transparency, regulations and checks and balances we can have a constitutional framework to make corruption much harder. A written constitution would help.”

• “You can expect a few bad eggs but not on this vast scale, particularly involving senior ministers.”

This all demonstrates the need for real change in our political system.

Unlock Democracy is campaigning for tougher rules on second jobs, restrictions on lobbying and a stronger Ministerial Code which is independently enforced.

A written constitution could set in stone the rules MPs have to follow and protect the independent bodies that enforce these rules. This would ensure that transparency and accountability are non-negotiable features of our politics.

That is why the campaign for a written constitution is at the heart of what we do.