Should the UK provide round-the-clock security to all 650 MPs at a cost of up to £100m?

There was no constituency for a blank cheque here. Even in the wake of a shocking assassination, the chamber recoiled from the idea that safety must mean uniform, round-the-clock protection for all 650 MPs, rejecting the proposal by five to one.

The generational pattern is telling less for its extremes than for its consistency: the 55-64s were the closest thing to a yes bloc, breaking against the plan by roughly two to one, while the 45-54s and the youngest voters rejected it almost to a person. This wasn't a young-versus-old story so much as near-universal doubt about scale — a sense that danger to MPs is real but that a flat £100m price tag was the wrong instrument for it.

The vote echoes a familiar British discomfort with security theatre bought at cost: the same instinct that has shadowed debates over stop-and-search budgets, counter-terror policing, and post-Jo Cox and post-David Amess reviews of MPs' safety — sympathy for the principle, resistance to the blank cheque.

That tension showed in the floor's own arguments. The Yes side's most-respected voice conceded the case was overreach even while backing it, admitting "not the level of what this question has asked (but none the less have put yes)"; the top No voice cut straight to the design flaw, arguing "not all will need the same level of security" and that "the question is too broad to reduce to yes and no."

Voters here didn't say MPs should be unprotected — they said this particular number, applied to every MP alike, was the wrong answer to the right worry.