Should the UK government host a prime-time televised national climate emergency briefing?

Even with heatwave headlines stacking up and 91 parliamentarians pushing for it, voters here were unmoved by the idea of a televised national climate emergency briefing, sinking it by more than two to one. The Packham film, the Westminster Hall briefing, the language of insidious threat — none of it translated into appetite for a prime-time address to the nation.

The one pocket of enthusiasm sat among 25-34 year-olds, who leaned for it three to two, but every other age band turned against the idea, most emphatically the 35-44s and the over-65s, who rejected it roughly five to one. Men were twice as likely as women to back it, though even they fell short of a majority — women split closer to four to one against.

The result echoes a familiar fault line in British climate politics: a gap between elite and campaigner urgency, often channelled through parliamentary letters and crowdfunded films, and public wariness of state-choreographed emergency messaging, the sort of thing that recalls scepticism over COVID briefings as much as climate concern itself.

For a cause framed as existential, the vote suggests the medium, not the message, is what voters here could not buy.