This is not to be snide (well, not just) but a reminder that you can hide in sight in SW1 provided you are a certain kind of man with the right sort of politics or clubbable oeuvre. Worth thinking about if we genuinely want to avoid this happening again

Part of the blind spot on Mandelson will have come about because he was heavily feted within Westminster/parts of the media.

This is why many deemed his appointment a ‘masterstroke’, long after most of the key details about him were known.

Some convenient recasting of that going on at the moment!

Overall, broadly clear voters are divided on North Sea & instinctively pro renewables over oil/gas.

But also that opinion on both is fairly fluid and malleable. Aside from a core on both sides, energy systems are not a subject people are super invested in ideologically (!).

End of thread

Finally, as a side note, I showed people multiple different anti North Sea drilling arguments - you can see people stay broadly divided in all.

But of the best performing ones was climate change - people's concerns over this for their kids remains underrated by elites imo.

The other angle here is the broader renewables vs oil/gas debate.

Here, opinion is less ambiguous. A clear plurality of back renewables over fossil fuels (albeit the margin has narrowed 3-4pts since December). Even when you don't impose a binary, result is similar.

One alternative is to give multiple or paired statements to choose from.

When you do this, we find people basically divided. Though the Labour 2024 coalition (incl the voters its lost since 2024) is solidly against new drilling licenses and want govt to stick to their guns.

That said, even agreeability bias cannot help fracking be popular beyond core Reform votes - albeit YouGov do give more context in their tracker question wording here ('some people say X, some people say Y') than in the previous question. This hasn't moved post-Iran.

This is classic agreeability bias - and happens a lot on subjects which are fairly remote to people or where they don't have particularly formed views.

This is why, in my view, you should be wary of straight up support/oppose Qs on this subject (all things energy actually imo)

First thing to say is it is basically possible to generate pluralities of support for both banning and expanding drilling - mutually exclusive policy positions - with basic question wording !

NEW: Where are voters landing on the North Sea oil debate post-Iran?

A quick thread on some of the fluidities and ambiguities, which I think can tell you something about polling/public opinion itself.

Includes some new polling and message testing via @yougov.co.uk for @persuasionuk.bsky.social 🧵

Excellent piece generally here and well worth a read

“After warnings in a critical review of the plans carried out for the Treasury [a] strict process…will push the opening date for any tram back into the late 2030s”

Sure NIMBYs are annoying but have you considered how the Treasury might be a bigger part of this country’s problems!

Yeh I think that’s probably right

Starmer and the US/Israel war with Iran: a relatively rare example where UK voters have both understood what his position is on an issue and support it.

(YouGov for Persuasion UK late March 2026)

Agree that he has a bit more flair and dexterity - maybe less dismissive of painting primary colours than Starmer is. But he’s still fundamentally a 60-something ex central banker, and Starmer’s conf speech last year shows he can do some of that stuff at a push

Yes and I think his conference speech last year was probably his best attempt at that. It’s quite hard to square with maintaining hardline rhetoric and policy on migration though no? Otherwise from what moral high ground is he speaking?

Am not saying a similar position vs Trump can be replicated or will save KS - just that I think you can get away with ‘difficult choices’ or unpopular positions on things, with voters and in turn your MPs, if you are on the right side of at least one big salient wedge issue.

Also helps that apparently the NDP (party to Carney’s left) is a mess so hasn’t up to now been a viable left competitor

Fortunes of Carney vs Starmer is instructive imo. Temperamentally similar leaders in similar performing economies.

Carney has actually governed to the right of Starmer in many ways.

But earned space to do so and held his vote together with one big emotional progressive dividing line: him vs Trump.

To grow the economy we need more trams, and fewer kebabs Britain’s second-tier cities are being held back by a simple problem, too many people still cannot get across them quickly enough to reach the jobs, customers and opportunities that drive growth.

Why do our second-tier cities underperform?
Why do we have fewer trams in the UK?

I try my best to give an answer to these two interconnected questions.

chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/to-grow-th...

This week, Ira revisits a series of interviews he did with his own parents that changed his relationship with them in ways he never saw coming. Listen to our new episode: "Call Your Parents." link.podtrac.com/r12ywz3z

Aesop: I TOLD YOU

Also seen people take work calls in actual libraries and then look surprised when people (me) take issue with it.

This is a moral sickness!

Was on a heavily delayed train recently, the aisles packed with people standing or sitting - and somebody started conducting a job interview over Zoom.

Ban this sick filth!

Young men, bad data and moral panic Before we build another national conversation around what young men supposedly believe, it is worth asking whether the data underneath it is any good.

After YouGov retracted their poll on young people going to church more, I wrote about why polling young people, especially young men, has become increasingly challenging.

It's a growing problem, and the market research industry needs to respond.

chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/young-men-...

thanks!

Local election seat projections for 2026 By Stephen Fisher Vote-intention opinion polls provided a rough guide to council seat net gains and losses last year. Reform, Greens and the Liberal Democrats were up in the polls, compared with fo…

My English local election net seat gains/losses projections for May 2026:

Con -1010
Lab -1900
LD +200
Green +450
Reform +2260

electionsetc.com/2026/03/25/l...

Net zero is not a zero-sum game Fresh polling shows a new divide on the right but support remains high for UK climate policy

And here is @greenmirandahere.bsky.social's full piece www.ft.com/content/161a...

Apathy and opposition Exploring trends in UK public and elite attitudes to the clean energy transition

Anyway, that's a summary - the full research and IPPR write up is here!

Thank you to @oliverdwwhite.bsky.social @beccam-c.bsky.social and many others who worked on it & @greenmirandahere.bsky.social for covering in today's FT Inside Politics! (you should sign up!)

persuasionuk.org/research/apa...

There's message testing evidence that connecting climate impacts with rising cost of living can maybe reboot its prioritisation among working class voters especially (and sound more credible than green jobs etc), but there's still a lot we don't know about why issues rise and fall in prioritisation.