Last week's poll: Policies for engineering and manufacturing

Of the 348 respondents, 42 per cent opted for the Conservatives, followed by 15 per cent Labour, 14 per cent Liberal Democrats and three per cent choosing ‘other’.

That does, however, leave over a quarter (26 per cent) of respondents putting their cross in the ‘None of the above’ box’, which by anyone’s estimations is a significant proportion of any vote.

As has been suggested by a number of readers who commented on the poll, one reason for this is the lack of clarity from political parties with regards to engineering and manufacturing.

“Without seeing any manifestos I can’t make any informed judgement,” said Eric Christison. “What policies for engineering and manufacturing?” added Michael Kenward.

One commentator – a certain 1saveenergy - suggested that successive governments have ‘consistently ignored advice and warnings from all sides & pushed their political agendas to the detriment of the UK population,’ whilst Andrew Smith has identified knowledge gaps in parliament that are detrimental to industry.