Should the government reform energy policy to cut business costs?

There was no real contest here: energy reform to cut business costs carried by roughly four to one, the kind of margin that suggests voters heard the CBI's case and simply agreed with it. When nearly eight in ten say yes, the interesting question stops being who won and becomes who resisted.

That resistance clustered among the oldest voters, where support dropped to a little over three in five, the softest reading in the chamber. It is a familiar pattern on energy questions — those furthest from wage-driven cost-of-living pressure, and often more invested in the status quo of bills and infrastructure, are warier of reform sold on growth projections decades out. The 55-64s, by contrast, backed it as strongly as anyone, suggesting the doubt sets in only at the very top of the age range.

The result echoes a broader consensus that has settled over British energy politics since the 2022 price shock: that high costs are a drag on competitiveness, and that something — grid reform, cheaper contracts, faster planning — has to give. Where opinion usually splinters is on the mechanism, not the diagnosis, and this vote reads as another instance of agreement on the problem outpacing any argument about the fix.

If there is a lesson in the numbers, it is that the growth case for energy reform now travels well beyond its natural business-lobby constituency — except among those old enough to remember when energy policy meant something else entirely.