The 11 richest countries where people have the least trust in their politicians

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi.Reuters/Ciro De Luca

The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Survey looks at the financial health of and risks facing countries around the world.

One of these is how much the public trusts its politicians.

The WEF used its executive-opinion survey to ask, “in your country, how do you rate the ethical standards of politicians?”

A score of 1 equates to “extremely low” while a rating of 7 is “extremely high.”

The measure is therefore based on the perceptions of the population. Absolutely no country scored a 7, although Singapore topped the rankings again for another year with 6.4.

Britain did pretty well with 4.7, and the US came at 40th with 3.9.

We looked only at the 34 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, which are all considered relatively developed economies with democratic systems, and looked at the 12 that had the worst performing scores.