Should the Foreign Office give climate change and international development a higher priority?

The most striking feature of this vote is its silence on one side. Of the 55 who backed a higher priority for climate and development at the Foreign Office, not one left an argument on the page — the case for Ed Miliband's agenda went entirely unmade, even as it took over a third of the vote. That is a rout in which the winning argument simply never had to argue.

No's voters, by contrast, arrived with a clear and consistent line, and a nuanced one: several were happy to keep climate on the agenda but drew a hard boundary around aid spending. The most-respected opinion on the page put it plainly: "I believe climate change and environmental protection should be prioritised, but not international development, we shouldn't be sending money abroad." A near-identical voice added, simply, "Climate change yes. International development not for me, we have enough issues here."

Behind that split ran two other threads voters rated just as highly. One was suspicion of motive, aimed squarely at the new foreign secretary — "All Ed knows about is climate so he is going to change UK Foreign Office policy to suit his CV? No" — and one was fiscal, tying foreign priorities to domestic finances: "Priority to British people until debt is reduced. We are not a rich country, we are in massive debt!" A more sceptical voter went further still, questioning both the science framing and the record of aid delivery, arguing development spending has shown "an acute ability to waste money on poorly chosen and often corrupt projects."

The result lands on a familiar British fault line — aid and climate diplomacy pitched against "look after our own first" instincts that have shadowed foreign policy since austerity, and which a debt-laden Treasury only sharpens. It is notable that even sympathetic voters split climate from development rather than rejecting both outright, suggesting the resistance is less to green diplomacy than to money leaving the country.

A new foreign secretary arrives with a Prime Minister's backing and cross-party advice lined up, but on this evidence he would need to make his own case — because on this page, nobody made it for him.