Should ID cards with fingerprints be introduced to improve suspect identification and border security?

The chamber's rejection of fingerprint ID cards, by 48 votes to 35, disguises a curious shape underneath: this was not a case of young liberty-minded voters facing down older security hawks, but almost the reverse. The over-65s backed the idea three to one, while the 35-44s, presumably parents and mid-career professionals with the most to lose from state overreach or data breaches, rejected it almost six to one.

Younger voters were split down the middle, the 16-24s tied and the 25-34s only mildly opposed, suggesting the instinctive post-Snowden suspicion of biometric databases has softened rather than hardened with each cohort. Men and women voted in near-identical proportions, both landing narrowly against, meaning gender told this story far less than age did.

The result echoes the pattern that sank Labour's original scheme in 2010 — cost, privacy and liberty concerns still carry more weight in the middle of working life than at its edges. It sits, too, alongside live arguments about grooming gang inquiries and border security, issues on which appetite for surveillance tools rises and falls with who feels most exposed to the state, and who feels most exposed without it.

The over-65s, who lived through the last ID card debate and lost it, seem readiest to try again.