Wrong Questions, Right Answer

New polling from Queen Mary University of London asked 1,200 people to look at ten policy objectives associated with Andy Burnham's government and pick the three they thought should be priorities.

Cost of living came top on 70 per cent. Regional growth second on 52. Social care third on 49. The researchers concluded, fairly, that the Prime Minister is focusing on what the public want.

Then there is this, tucked into the findings. Reform UK voters were much more likely than others to write in immigration and asylum as an "other" objective that should be prioritised.

They had to write it in. It was not among the ten.

To be fair to the pollsters, that is not a flaw in their work — they were testing this government's stated agenda, and their list reflects it accurately. Which is rather the point. A significant portion of the electorate could not find the thing they care most about on a list of ten priorities drawn from what the government says it is doing, and had to add it by hand in the box marked other.

We keep looking for the mechanism by which public opinion fails to become government policy. Here is one, in miniature. It is not that the answer comes back wrong. It is that the question is never printed.