Should the UK government increase defence spending to 3% of GDP?

Yes carried the day emphatically, 33 votes to 3, a margin that leaves little doubt about where this chamber stands on rearmament. This was not a contest so much as a consensus, the kind of lopsided result that suggests the question landed at a moment when the case for higher defence spending felt settled rather than debated.

The one crack in that consensus sits with the youngest voters. The 25-34 bracket was the only age group to register any No votes at all, three of eleven, pulling that cohort down to 73% yes while every other age band from 35 upward voted unanimously in favour. It is a familiar generational pattern on security spending, where those furthest from Cold War memory and closest to competing claims on the public purse — housing, wages, the NHS — show the most hesitation about redirecting billions towards the military.

Gender told a smaller but similar story: men backed the rise almost to a man, 27 of 28, while the four women who voted split three to one. With numbers this thin the split is suggestive rather than conclusive, but it echoes a wider pattern in British opinion on defence, where support for higher military spending has long run stronger among men than women. The overall shape of the vote, though, points less to a divided country than to a rare moment of near-agreement across most of it, with youth the one visible fault line.