Should the UK government spend over £250 million to add over 500 police officers protecting Jewish communities?

A one-point margin makes this look like a coin toss, but the near-even 41-40 split conceals a coalition that barely exists — this was a chamber of contradictions rather than consensus, with the yes vote scraping home only because one group swung so hard it dragged the rest along.

That group was women, who backed the spending by a landslide, while men were roughly evenly torn between security-first instincts and scepticism about a nine-figure bill for policing alone. It's a divide that maps neatly onto how the same instinct — protect Jewish communities visibly and immediately — reads differently depending on how urgently the threat is felt versus how the money might otherwise be spent.

Age tells its own odd story: the 35-44s were the most hostile of any bracket, while 25-34s and the late-50s cohort were the likeliest to say yes, cutting across the usual generational script on security spending. It leaves this less a verdict on antisemitism policy than on the price tag attached to it — a debate about proportionality that has trailed every step-change in counter-terror funding since 7/7, now replayed for a threat level raised to severe.

Even the yes side barely made its case; the no side barely lost it.