Do you believe that most politicians are honest?

There was no age or gender coalition here worth calling a divide, more a shared verdict arrived at from every direction: the young and the old, men and the handful of women who voted, all landed on the same side, with only the middle-aged 45-54 group even more emphatic in its distrust. That absence of fracture is itself the finding — cynicism about political integrity has stopped being a generational or partisan position and become close to background weather.

It sits squarely on the fault line of a decade of broken manifesto pledges, expenses rows and second-jobs scandals that has pushed public trust in politicians to levels surveys already put in single figures — this vote reads less like a fresh verdict than a confirmation of a settled mood. The 27% who said yes look less like optimists than the residue of people still willing to distinguish the individual MP from the class.

What little argument there was tilted the same way. The floor's most-respected Yes voice conceded the point almost before making it, writing that "most politicians believe they are honest. Until they get caught" — hardly a ringing defence. The top-rated No case was blunter still, describing politicians as "careerists, not peers" who "game their expenses for profit & bend to lobbyists" and represent only themselves.

When even your defenders sound like prosecutors, the verdict was never really in doubt.