Should Parliament have a veto over political appointments to top diplomatic posts?

The Mandelson affair produced a verdict less about the man than the machinery, with 19 of 32 voters here backing a parliamentary veto over top diplomatic appointments against 13 who preferred to leave the prerogative alone. That is a clear win, but not a clean one: strip out the gender gap and the chamber looks like a coin toss.

Women were the driving force, backing scrutiny three to one, while men divided almost exactly down the middle. Age told a scrappier story than gender — the middle-aged and 55-to-64s were the most convinced reformers, the youngest voters mostly wanted to leave well alone, and the over-65s swung against a veto too, suggesting this was no simple generational reflex against establishment stitch-ups.

The result taps a familiar seam in British constitutional argument: executive patronage versus parliamentary oversight, the same tension that runs through debates on peerages, quango chairs and now embassies, sharpened here by a security-clearance row that made due process itself look improvised. It is the kind of scandal that tends to convert institutionalists into reformers, at least for a fortnight.

That the Foreign Office's critics found their firmest allies among women and the 45-64s, not the young, says as much about who still trusts Westminster's instincts as it does about Mandelson.