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Good morning. Three years ago a friend of mine called Thomas fractured his spine in a swimming accident. Thomas was left paralysed and vulnerable but, being the kind of man he is, he found a way to turn a weakness into a strength. Thomas told me he had come to live with what he describes as a “radical trust” in other human beings. Things able bodied people take for granted had, for him, become leaps of faith. If he called a taxi, he had to trust that it would actually arrive and that the driver would help. People weren’t always as reliable or kind as Thomas might hope. But many were. I would describe this as the invisible web of trust that holds society together. Its existence is sometimes hidden by headlines. We are told repeatedly that Britain has lost faith in experts, to the point that populism has apparently clouded our common sense. Last Sunday, Ipsos Mori and Mumsnet released their annual Veracity Index, which ranks jobs and professionals in order of how much the public trusts them. At the bottom of the league table sit politicians, trusted by just 15 per cent of those surveyed. Only 24 per cent of them trust journalists. The thing is, I’m not sure I entirely trust those groups of people either – and I am a journalist. Confidence in parts of the journalism industry was rocked by the phone hacking inquiry and some politicians have been found wanting, too: the expenses scandal comes to mind. In other words, the professions at the bottom of the list are there for quite rational reasons. By contrast, faith in other types of professionals is very healthy. For example, 93 per cent of people trust nurses, 71 per cent trust the police and 69 per cent trust the clergy. That’s reassuring, because these are the people to whom we entrust ourselves when we are at our most vulnerable. Ignore the professional doomsayers! Societal cohesion is still there. Our willingness to put ourselves in other people’s hands is an act of faith. For me, it is analogous to faith in God. I am not naïve, I know that people are capable of doing terrible things. And something terrible happening – like a friend being paralysed by a swimming accident – forces me to ask if God is capricious or even there. What restores my faith is, in part, people’s everyday kindnesses that are small yet so profound that they convince me that morality is woven into our DNA. I don’t always trust experts, no, but I do trust humanity.