Would higher NATO defence spending demands from Trump make Britain safer?

What's striking here is not that the vote passed comfortably but the almost linear generational gradient behind it: support climbed from a coin-toss among the youngest voters to near-unanimity among the over-65s, as if trust in Trump-driven rearmament tracks distance from, rather than proximity to, the barracks. Britain, on this evidence, split cleanly along a lifetime's exposure to Cold War logic.

The 25-34s were the only bloc genuinely torn, deadlocked down the middle, while the 35-44s and 55-64s swung hard behind higher spending — suggesting the doubters are concentrated precisely among those most likely to face a call-up or a squeezed budget, not among the pensioners cheering readiness from a safe remove. Men and women, by contrast, moved almost in lockstep, both comfortably in favour, so this was a generational rather than a gender story.

The result echoes the older, familiar fracture over British defence commitments abroad — from Iraq to Afghanistan to Ukraine — where older cohorts have consistently backed harder military postures than the young who'd bear more of their consequences.

A verdict for rearmament, then, carried less by conviction across the board than by the age groups furthest from having to fund or fight it.