Should pubs be allowed to open at 1am for England games?

There is something almost patriotic about the scale of this result: a four-to-one vote to let pubs stay open for a 1am kick-off, in a country that normally treats drinking hours as a matter for careful bureaucratic negotiation. Whatever reservations exist about late licensing, they melted in the face of a World Cup round of 16 tie.

The dissent came from an unexpected quarter. Every age band from 25 to 64 backed the extension by well over four to one, but the 16-24s alone tipped the other way, splitting narrowly against it, and the smaller band of over-65s was more evenly torn. Men were the more enthusiastic backers, women somewhat more cautious, though a majority of both wanted the pubs open.

It is a small, telling echo of the running argument between individual liberty and licensing red tape that flares up every time England go deep in a tournament — TENs, blanket extensions, councils scrambling to keep up with the fixture list. Here, at least, the instinct was overwhelmingly deregulatory: let people watch the football where they like, whatever time it kicks off.

If the young were the ones most likely to be up at 1am anyway, they were, oddly, the ones least keen to make it official.