Britain Backs Defence Push and Deportation Law Change

Britain has signalled it is ready to put guns before butter. On the day’s most striking questions the country backed higher NATO defence demands from Trump by two to one and said hitting 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence would justify cuts elsewhere in public spending by a similar margin. Both results showed the same age pattern: enthusiasm rose sharply among the over-25s, while the youngest voters, who would inherit the bill, were the most reluctant.

The verdicts

Should the UK change the 1971 law to allow deportation of Shabir Ahmed? produced the clearest verdict of the day, with the country saying yes by better than five to one. When a specific offender draws near-unanimous agreement across every age group and both sexes, the vote is really about the law itself.

Would higher NATO defence spending demands from Trump make Britain safer? and the 3.5-per-cent question both delivered solid yes votes, though the youngest cohort again proved the outlier, preferring to protect the welfare state.

On personnel, Would Andy Burnham improve Labour’s electoral prospects over Keir Starmer? the answer was no, but only narrowly. Men leaned strongly for Burnham while women were decisively against him.

Should the UK replace FPTP with any form of proportional representation? produced a clear yes from every age band between 16 and 65-plus, a rare constitutional question that united rather than divided the generations.

Does marriage equality strengthen British society? now looks settled: a decade after the law changed, the country backed the idea by two to one with barely a fracture along old dividing lines.

Is transgenderism a danger to British culture and society? drew a 63 per cent yes, yet the generational lines ran backwards from the usual script. The youngest voters pushed back hardest against the “danger” framing while the 35-64s carried the yes side by close to four to one.

Will Count Binface defeat Nigel Farage in the upcoming by-election? ended in a three-to-two no. Even those who enjoy the joke declined to bet on it actually winning.

Two foreign-policy questions produced narrower results. Would UK support for further US strikes on Iran risk escalating Middle East conflict? split the country almost down the middle, with the 25-34s sounding the alarm and the 55-64s staying calm. Should the JCPOA have been maintained instead of the ongoing war? saw six in ten say diplomacy would have been better, though the 35-44s, who came of age watching Iraq and Syria, were the lone holdouts.

Should the UK government spend over £250 million to add over 500 police officers protecting Jewish communities? looked like a dead heat on paper but hid a sharp gender split: women backed the funding by a landslide, men split against it.

Does the UK gain a net economic benefit from international higher education students? scraped a narrow yes for the economists’ arithmetic, though the closeness suggested the ledger has not quite settled the argument.

Voting continues tomorrow.

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