Can Andy Slaughter effectively serve as Solicitor General after meeting Hamas in 2010?

The most striking thing about this vote is the mismatch between the argument and the arithmetic. Every substantial defence of Andy Slaughter came from the Yes side, four separate voices building a case for redemption and diplomatic nuance, and still the chamber narrowly ruled him out as Solicitor General over his 2010 meeting with Hamas.

Yes voters reached for precedent and principle rather than a simple defence of the man. One invoked Mo Mowlam's talks with the Provisional IRA — "talks not guns brings peace" — while another drew a sharper line between contact and complicity: "talking and even understanding are not supporting." A third asked the question that framed the whole side's case, "what are his positions NOW?", treating seventeen years of subsequent conduct as the relevant evidence, not a single meeting.

The lone No opinion left on the page did not dispute any of that generosity — it simply redrew the test for disqualification. Conceding that "plenty of people have met plenty of despicable organisations," including naming Jeremy Corbyn's record of doing so, it argued the bar is not contact but conviction: "what does is believing in the goodness of those organisations." That one line seems to have done more work in the voting booth than the four arguments ranged against it.

The result sits squarely on the familiar fault line over who gets to hold office having once engaged with organisations proscribed as terrorist — the same argument that has trailed Corbyn for a decade and now attaches itself to a Cabinet appointment under a new prime minister. That the sceptical case won with barely any supporting text suggests voters brought their priors on Hamas and past contact with it into the booth largely unpersuaded by argument either way.

That the persuasive side lost by six points is itself the story: on this question, it seems, voters trusted their instinct on where sympathy tips into legitimisation more than they trusted the case for redemption.