Should the UK abandon its net zero target by 2050?

There is no generational fault line here to lean on: from the handful of 16-24s to the 55-64s, who turned out in the greatest numbers, majorities of two to one or better wanted net zero gone. Britain's climate consensus, at least among those who bothered to vote, looks less like a live argument than a settled one running the other way.

Women who took part were even firmer than men, backing repeal by nine to one, while men still landed decisively for scrapping the target by better than two to one. That gender gap, small in absolute numbers but consistent in direction, is the one texture in an otherwise uniform result.

The question was pointedly asked of a region built on the target's promise — the Humber's steel, chemicals and refining, and the tens of thousands of green jobs its own energy board says net zero could bring. That the vote still broke so heavily for abandonment suggests the argument over subsidies, contracts and "stupid" green spending, as Reform frames it, is landing even on the industrial ground meant to benefit most.

A regional economy staked on the transition voted, decisively, against the target that underwrites it.