Members reject climate compensation overwhelmingly, while unemployment benefits end in a dead heat

Yesterday's loudest verdict came on foreign aid with a twist: members rejected UK compensation for countries like Pakistan for climate damage, and did so overwhelmingly. The mood was less climate scepticism than exasperation, with "China can pay" running through the No case. At the other end of the scale, one result could not have been tighter: a dead heat.

The verdicts

That dead heat came on whether unemployment benefits should shrink the longer someone stays out of work. Yes voters called welfare "a safety net, not a permanent alternative to employment"; No voters replied that need doesn't fall with time. It is a narrow result, and nobody blinked.

On justice, an automatic five-year sentence for carrying a knife without good reason was rejected, but only narrowly. The best-rated No line asked whether we could "just try actually using the laws we have first".

Public services and the economy brought some comfortable wins. Members backed free prescriptions for everyone in England comfortably, with Yes voters pointing to working people forced to ration medication. They also backed renationalising Royal Mail comfortably, though the sharpest No line was a reluctant shrug: "My heart says yes. My head says no."

Governance told a more tangled story. Banning charities from political campaigning won comfortably, yet the question that stuck came from the No side: why shouldn't a domestic violence charity lobby for a change in domestic violence law? Meanwhile, members voted comfortably against abolishing the House of Lords, though many No voters sounded like abolitionists in all but ballot, objecting that the question bundled in a single chamber and was "a false dilemma".

Finally, members backed Ukraine joining NATO comfortably, over a No case that floated a buffer-state alternative and warned of "a fast track towards a WW3 conflict".

A fresh ballot is open today, and the profiles are waiting for more votes.

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