A 85-year-old former politician has caused a stir in the Netherlands with a passionate plea for a ‘democracy of trust’.

Jan Terlouw, who founded D66 in 1966, was a guest on tv chat show De Wereld Draait Door on Wednesday and said that the main problem society is facing is a lack of trust. It is the kind of trust that had people put a string on the lock and hang it from the letterbox so neighbours could go into each other’s houses, he said.

Terlouw called on politicians here and abroad to show their integrity.  ‘Show especially that you are there to serve the common good, that you are there to give the young a world that can be mended and where we can trust each other again,’ he said. ‘Where the string dangles from the letterbox.’

His emotional plea, made straight to camera without the aid of an autocue, is still reverberating around social media, eliciting many comments from people too young to know about Terlouw’s political career.

‘My parents used to vote D66, now I know why’, one commenter said on Twitter.

Even visitors to populist website Dumpert had good words to say about the speech with commenters calling it ‘moving’ and ‘straight from the heart’.  ‘He won’t be here soon, but we will. We should listen to what he has to say,’ said one commenter.