The boy has no name – yet has an opinion on the Brexit.

If you’re expecting a clever business advice on the Brexit, here’s the only one I have: deal with it and stop whining. But that’s not my point today. I would like to reach out to our leaders and humbly venture a few thoughts on the reason behind what seems to be a widening gap between them and the public.

Let’s take a step back

70 years ago, the world was waking up from the most horrific nightmare. It was such a trauma that for 35 years, “never again” was the ultimate argument for any public debate in most of the world. Simple message, strongly felt by all and extremely efficient to allow world leaders to shape another world with the full consent of the masses. This is how the European Community was born.

By the late 80’, that message had lived. The fear of WW3 had fallen with the Berlin wall and the wars of industrialised countries were fought outside of their borders – to be followed on CNN. Stability had been achieved in the eyes of many and prosperity became the next target. For 35 more years, one only needed to shout “the economy, stupid” and all the masses started again to fall in line, frightened by the prospect that something might affect their prosperity, leaving it to their leaders to do the right thing.

And admittedly a lot has been achieved during these 70 years. Sheltered from too much democratic scrutiny by the clever use of only two successive simplistic messages, leaders, elites and experts have made the world a better place in 2016 than it was in 1946. Far from perfect, with far too many people and peoples left on the side of the road. But still a better world.

So one can reasonably assume that the majority of them are not corrupt, incompetent or plain psychopaths… or put another way that collectively, despite the individuals, they have achieved what many call progress. But they did that with a slight disregard for the peoples, feeding them with just enough simplistic slogans to get them off their back and let them get on with the job.

So what happened?

In 2016, “never again” and “the economy, stupid” don’t work anymore and quite frankly, neither does “take back control”. With a 50/50 chance to win or lose with this message, it is as lousy a bet as the previous ones to answer the expectations of the peoples. And please let’s not fool ourselves; this is not a grumpy Welsh pensioner problem; it is happening globally.

Oh yes, and another thing: the traditional distinctions between left, centre, right, progressive, liberals, conservatives, etc. They don’t work anymore. Do I need to give examples of party rifts in today’s UK and US? Observers now turn to splitting the people between young and old, educated and not educated, rural and urban, etc.

Once again, I’m practically no one, and nobody’s asked for my opinion but after reading numerous articles, surveys and polls these last days, I feel these marketing-inspired ways to segment the population will not help. From my little window, there might be something more actionable in the analysis of the trust relationship between the people and the ones in charge.

To pick on one such analysis, according to the annual Ipsos MORI’s Veracity index in the UK, since its first report in 1984, people have consistently distrusted politicians in general, government ministers, estate agents, journalists, bankers, business leaders and trade union officials – in that order. To be sure, this is not the Leave camp; this is the general British public… for the last 30 years and more. It would not be far-fetched to consider that a very similar picture could be painted beyond the borders of the United Kingdom.

So those who advocate that the link between people and the elites has been recently broken have not examined the facts. They believe that leaders have now lost the trust of the people whereas they in fact never had it; they just had their consent thanks to the fortunate succession of two compelling forces: the need for stability and the need for prosperity. Now there seems to be no simple compelling reason anymore to offer consent and the lack of a trusted relationship between the people and the elites is suddenly sorely missed.

What now?

First of all, if my assumptions are right, leaders should stop trying to rebuild a trusting relationship that wasn’t. This should save us the useless quest for “good old days” approaches and messages and practices that were no better than the present ones. They should also realise that their job has permanently become more difficult: in addition to delivering a service to the public, they need to really earn trust and not only get consent.

And to achieve that, they might learn from the three professions that have consistently been positioned at the top of the trust ladder by the same study mentioned above: doctors, teachers and scientists. The experience of anyone dealing with these professions would be with people who care for others, sincerely empathise or bring tremendous direct value; with professionals who do not get people “off their back” to get on with their job; with people who have no other practice than really engage with others.

Beyond the reduction in the number of people who distrust them, a sincere effort by world leaders to build a profound trusting relationship with people would have a potential side-effect at the other end of the spectrum: it might also reduce the number or the impact of those who abandoned themselves to so blind a faith in unworthy ideologies that they are ready to do the unthinkable.