Politics & Power Quote by George Carey

"Trust the politicians" is a startling phrase from a clergyman because it rubs against the job description. Clergy are paid, in part, to keep one foot outside the state: to speak for conscience, not caucus. So when George Carey urges trust in politicians, the line reads less like naive faith and more like an attempt to stabilize a nervous civic moment - a call to accept imperfect authority because the alternative is a deeper, more dangerous kind of fragmentation.

The specific intent is pragmatic. Carey is implicitly drawing a boundary around roles: elected officials make consequential decisions; religious leaders should not seize the levers of policy by moral fiat. In a Britain still shaped by an established church, that restraint matters. The Archbishop of Canterbury can easily sound like a shadow minister; this sentence works as a preemptive disavowal of theocratic temptation, a reminder that legitimacy flows through democratic process, not pulpit charisma.

The subtext, though, is conditional. "We've got to" signals necessity, not admiration. It's an appeal for social consent at the moment it feels hardest - when politicians are distrusted, institutions look thin, and the public wants someone cleaner to take the wheel. Carey is asking the audience to swallow the messy fact that politics is where plural societies negotiate tradeoffs. Clergy can offer ethical vocabulary, but they can't provide the procedural mandate.

The context likely includes a crisis-laden policy arena - war, public order, welfare, bioethics - where religious sentiment runs high and pressure mounts for moral shortcuts. The line tries to cool the temperature: trust the process, even if you don't love the players.