Should Parliament approve the proposed Seventh Carbon Budget targeting an 87% emissions reduction by 2042?

What this vote exposed was less a verdict on climate science than a generational ledger of who trusts the sums. Support fell steadily the older the voter got, from a majority among the under-35s to near-unanimous rejection among the over-55s, a gradient so clean it reads like a cohort effect rather than noise — those with longest exposure to bills, taxes and past green promises were the least willing to bank on £865bn of projected net benefit arriving as advertised.

The gender split was just as stark and arguably more telling: men were evenly divided, but not a single woman among the ten who voted backed the budget. That kind of unanimity in a self-selected sample doesn't happen by accident, and it suggests the proposal's costs — bound up in tax and household bills — landed as a harder sell with women voters than the abstract promise of avoided fossil-fuel spending did.

The result sits squarely in the argument that has trailed the Climate Change Act since 2008 and sharpened since the mini-budget years: whether legally binding decarbonisation targets are prudent long-term insurance or an expensive gamble imposed without a mandate. This chamber, at least, leaned firmly toward the latter reading.

The most-respected No voice distilled that suspicion bluntly — "we are paying taxes for a scam" that "nobody was consulted on" — a complaint less about carbon than about consent, and it was that argument, not a rival Yes case, that the floor chose to elevate.

A budget built on decades of modelling met a vote built on decades of scepticism, and the scepticism won.