UK Splits Down the Middle on Banning Islam

The UK came within a single vote of backing a ban on Islam, an outcome that lays bare just how raw the country's arguments about religion, law and belonging have become.

The Should Islam be banned? referendum ended in a dead heat, with the chamber of 147 as evenly cleaved as the nation itself. That tension overshadowed every other result on a day when voters showed little hesitation elsewhere.

The verdicts

Should the UK ban company donations to political parties? passed by two to one, the Reform funding row giving the chamber a clean hook it seized without much fuss. Voters also backed the premise that the Berlin Pride attacker's background proves inconsistency in progressive values, again by a clear two-to-one margin, though the sharpest arguments came from the losing side.

On defence, the country said yes by two to one to launching the biggest peacetime rearmament, yet the most respected case on the page was less about distant threats than securing the border. Do we need to re-strengthen our trade unions giving them more power over government? met a two-to-one no, a numerical rout achieved with almost no rhetorical spark from either side.

Can Andy Slaughter effectively serve as Solicitor General after meeting Hamas in 2010? produced a thin no verdict despite four of the five most respected opinions arguing the opposite. Should prisoners pay for their own incarceration like people pay for social care? scraped a modest yes, though the closeness and threadbare debate suggested comfort with the instinct but little confidence in the mechanics.

Finally, Is appointing John Healey as Chancellor the right move for the British economy? limped home by the narrowest of margins in the lowest turnout of the day, a coin-toss result wrapped in caveats.

Voting continues today.

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