ANDREW MITCHELL is a man vindicated. A year ago the newly appointed Conservative chief whip had an altercation at the gates to Downing Street. It was alleged that he called a policeman a “fucking pleb”. Police panjandrums accepted this story. Most of the public did, too—and, behind doors, so did many Tories. The following month police officers investigating it emerged from a meeting with Mr Mitchell claiming that he had refused to elaborate on the incident, and that he should therefore resign. He did so a week later. Since then, however, the case against him has crumpled.

CCTV footage quickly emerged suggesting that the encounter in Downing Street had been momentary and without onlookers, contradicting the police log. Then doubts arose about the investigators’ claims. On October 15th the Independent Police Complaints Commission issued a devastating report about the police officers’ behaviour. It highlighted a recording of their meeting with Mr Mitchell in which, contrary to what they later said, he denied having used the word “pleb”.

Fellow politicians, including David Cameron, have called for the police officers in question to be disciplined. Meanwhile Mr Mitchell’s political rehabilitation is gathering steam. He is currently suing the Sun, a tabloid newspaper, over the original story, and is said to be in line for a good job—either in the cabinet or, when the vacancy arises in 2014, as Britain’s next EU commissioner.

The saga shows the police to be politically cavalier. “Plebgate” came in the midst of much-needed police reforms. These include outsourcing back-office functions, making pay and promotion more dependent on performance and recruiting new managers from the private sector.

Naturally, “plebgate” was a fillip to those angry about the changes; opponents protested in T-shirts bearing the slogan “PC Pleb and Proud”. Deborah Glass, the deputy chair of the IPCC, has called for a panel to consider whether the misrepresentation of Mr Mitchell’s comments was a “deliberate attempt” by certain officers to discredit him “in pursuit of a wider agenda”. For now, though, public sympathies will likely remain with the police—as they have after a series of recent embarrassments for the forces.

This is a sign of politicians’ dismal public standing. According to Ipsos MORI, a pollster, two out of three Britons trust the police. Four in five distrust politicians. It was not always thus: 30 years ago people tended to agree that MPs had a “high personal moral code”. Such metrics chasten even furious politicians. Mr Mitchell never accused the Downing Street officer of lying: in the court of public opinion, it seems, he felt that his word could not compete with a policeman’s. He has even suggested that the wind distorted his comments.

Such contortions are testimony to the hostility faced by politicians who tweak popular interest groups. Ministers’ poverty of trust weakens their mandate to challenge those rich in it. That explains why bodies like the National Union of Teachers and the Police Federation have been able to rally public opinion against sensible government reforms to education and policing. It also explains why politicians find it so much easier to defend reforms making life harder for bankers and journalists—the only people less trusted than they are.