Who is morally responsible for Britain's political short-termism?

Britain's political short-termism isn't just a failure of leadership—it's a crisis of trust rooted in our evolutionary wiring and amplified by the attention economy. The panel on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze argues that voters aren't inherently selfish; rather, generations of broken promises—from Brexit to austerity—have made it rational for citizens to grab the marshmallow now. The real culprit isn't human nature, but the digital infrastructure that exploits our attention, centralizing power in Silicon Valley and turning politics into a spectacle. Yet, the solution isn't more charisma or longer election cycles. It's rebuilding trust through consistent delivery, designing political systems that make long-term thinking easier, and framing future benefits in vivid, emotional terms. As one guest put it: 'Trust is easy to lose, hard to build.' The episode reveals that the path to a more patient, purposeful democracy lies not in blaming voters or politicians, but in recognizing that both are victims of a system designed to reward immediacy—and that fixing it requires structural change, not just better speeches.