What caused a flurry of media reports?

13th Jan 2025

 

The start of the year saw a flurry of media reports – across the mainstream outlets – saying the government has repealed the previous 2035 ban on the sale of boilers.

I was a bit surprised to read this for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as the hastily put together response from DESNZ said, there was not a legal target date of 2035 to repeal – it was just a target date outlined by the previous Ministerial team. And secondly, the current Energy Secretary said during the general election campaign that he was scrapping the 2035 date. So why the fuss now?

I’m speculating but suspect politics has kicked in and someone deliberately briefed the story to the press to get the headlines it did. It is not a coincidence that opinion polls are sending some clear signals to politicians at the moment, so expect some red meat to be thrown to the wolves.

With this in mind, I looked back at the YouGov polling tracker to see how public sentiment had changed over the past few years, and it threw up some interesting numbers.

Back on 1st December 2019, the most pressing issues for the British public were:- Britain leaving the EU 63 percent; Health 47 percent; the Environment 31 percent; the Economy 24 percent; Immigration and Asylum 22 percent Crime 21 percent and Education 13 percent. On 6th January 2025, the responses were:- Economy 51 percent; Immigration and Asylum 45 percent; Health 42 percent with the others being Crime 19 percent, Environment 17 percent, Britain and the EU 12 percent and Education 10 percent.

Now I put it to you, if your customers had expressed these two sets of opinions, faced with those numbers how would you respond?

It shouldn’t be a surprise that issues around consumer costs i.e. replacing boilers with more expensive technologies is no longer flavour of the month for politicians. It should be even less of a surprise that they then let this be known in the media as a means of telling their customers (the voters) that they are in touch with public opinion.

No conspiracy, no clever Machiavellian plot, just plain old simple politics at play.

 

Mike Foster

EUA's Chief Executive

 

Recent Blogs