Should the UK government strengthen steel import quotas to protect domestic producers?

Protectionism won this one, 16 votes to 10, a comfortable if hardly overwhelming margin on a question that pits domestic industry against the free-trade instincts more usually associated with post-Brexit economic debate. Twenty-six votes is a small chamber, but the shape of the result is legible enough.

The real fracture is generational, and it runs backwards from what might be expected. The 16-24 bracket was the only cohort to reject stronger quotas, 6 to 4, while every voter aged 35 and over who took part backed them, and 25-34s leaned yes too. Younger voters, more exposed to the consumer-price consequences of import barriers, look more instinctively free-trade here than their elders, who tilt toward shielding jobs and producers.

Gender cut the other way and more sharply: men backed quotas 10 to 6, women rejected them 4 to 2. It is a small female sample, but the divergence echoes a familiar pattern on this platform, where economic nationalism plays better with men than women, whatever the specific policy on the table.

Steel quotas may sound like a technical trade matter, but the coalition backing them here looks like the coalition that has long backed managed trade over open markets — older, male, protectionist by instinct.