The UK faces a decision on whether to expand North Sea oil drilling or accelerate renewables. Energy security concerns have risen due to Russia's war in Ukraine and tensions involving Iran. Andy Burnham, seen as Keir Starmer's likely successor, would confront this choice if he becomes prime minister.
Expand drilling won the referendum, 54% to 46%, an eight-point margin that flatters the "yes" side more than the underlying vote suggests. Strip out the one age bracket with real numbers behind it and the picture inverts: this was a result carried by scattered small groups rather than a settled consensus.
The 25-34s, the biggest cohort by far at 13 votes, broke decisively for renewables, 9 to 4, the only split in the data with enough weight to generalise from. Every other age group ran the other way, but each on a handful of votes — three under-24s, three in their late 30s, a lone over-65 — too thin to call a trend, more a reminder that this vote drew a narrow slice of the country rather than a cross-section of it.
Gender told a similar story of small-sample noise: men split close to even, 7-8, while five women broke 4-1 for renewables. Neither reaches the size where a newspaper column should lean on it, but both point the same direction as the age data, toward younger and female voters favouring the net-zero path and leaving fossil-fuel expansion looking like a minority taste dressed up by a majority vote.
It is the sort of split that would unsettle Andy Burnham more than reassure him: the "yes" side won the vote, but not the constituency that actually turned out in force.
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1 Opinion
Yes. Please.