Should the Scottish parliament be axed?

The chamber was never seriously tempted to scrap the Scottish Parliament, but the size of the no vote flatters an argument that, on the evidence of the split, only really persuaded the young and the old at either end of working life. It was the middle-aged, those in their late thirties through their early sixties, who came closest to an even split, suggesting the abolition case travels best with people who remember pre-devolution Scotland or have lived long enough with Holyrood to tire of it, while the youngest voters, who have known nothing else, were the most hostile to axing it.

Gender cut a sharper line than age: women here divided exactly down the middle while men rejected abolition by two to one, a gap that hints the "extra layer of politicians" critique lands more with men and that any anti-Holyrood coalition would have to be built disproportionately from them. That the vote landed weeks after a pro-independence majority demanded a second referendum only sharpens the irony — the same electorate that keeps sending nationalists to Holyrood shows real appetite, at least among some men and older voters, for questioning whether the parliament should exist at all.

The result echoes a fault line as old as devolution itself: whether Holyrood is the guarantor of Scottish self-government or a costly duplication of Westminster, a debate that predates the SNP's rise and will outlast this particular independence stand-off. It also sits inside the wider, unresolved argument about how devolved and federal structures should work across the UK, an argument this vote settles for precisely no one beyond its own 112 participants.

The floor's sharpest exchange captured that tension. The strongest Yes case argued devolution has left Scotland worse off, that "health, education and the economy all down" while politicians chase "shock jock issues", and that the system "needs adults in charge and we have none"; the most-respected No voice countered with a comparative defence of federal-style arrangements, noting simply that "nations with federal governments do very well. USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Brazil etc."

Holyrood survives the vote, but not the argument.