GENERAL election candidates are performing below par when it comes to trust according to members of Stourbridge Golf Club.

The chat in the bar at the Worcester Lane course is about whether either of the major parties can be believed.

Policies like tax and immigration take second place to the fundamental issue of honesty, which some players think is in short supply.

Paul Rock, aged 71, said: “They don’t come over as truthful, there are so many politicians recently that have proved themselves to be untrustworthy such as Boris – he has led the way.”

For Mr Rock it’s not party political, he thinks politicians on both sides are not giving straight answers and the current Labour leader caught his attention in a debate on Sky TV.

Mr Rock added: “We were watching a program, they were trying to tie Starmer down and he wouldn’t answer, he just kept saying ‘we may not raise taxes’.

“It’s not good enough, the interviewer said ‘so that means you might’, everybody knows that if they say they don’t intend to they could do.”

Ron McMaster, aged 78, who is undecided about whether to vote Labour or Conservative is also not convinced he is getting the full story from either side. 

He said: “They are not telling the truth about how they are going to raise the money, they are proposing all these things they are going to spend money on and they are not going to increase taxes – that’s rubbish.

“They are going to have to increase taxes to pay for all this, why don’t they tell us the truth?”

The golfers agreed they would be happier to hear bad news rather than being left in the dark, saying they would be happy to hear about tax rises if it led to better public services.

Trevor Woodhouse, aged 78, said: “If they just stood up and said you are going to have this huge bill because that is definitely what’s going to happen.”

Kevin Barron cast his mind back to what he says is an example of how things can be distorted.

Mr Barron, aged 64, said: “VAT was sold to me as a tax on luxury goods, that’s how it was described. What isn’t it on now and how much has the rate gone up?

“This is what happens, it’s inevitable, the cost of living is only going up.

“For the government to try and make the UK better they are going to have to raise taxes but rather than saying they are going to do it, they are going to do it stealthily.”

Some of the golfers don’t believe the current political system is a fair way to run the country because it favours the two major parties.

Mr Barron added:  “I don’t think anyone trusts politicians, we get the political parties that we vote for and to get the first past the post thing changed – they are not going to vote to change it because it is in their self-interest.”