The government has finalised new steel import quotas. UK Steel welcomed the measures as stronger protection against global overcapacity and unfair imports but warned that gaps remain, leaving parts of the supply chain exposed to heavily subsidised foreign steel.
Protectionism won this one, 16 votes to 10, a comfortable if hardly overwhelming margin on a question that pits domestic industry against the free-trade instincts more usually associated with post-Brexit economic debate. Twenty-six votes is a small chamber, but the shape of the result is legible enough.
The real fracture is generational, and it runs backwards from what might be expected. The 16-24 bracket was the only cohort to reject stronger quotas, 6 to 4, while every voter aged 35 and over who took part backed them, and 25-34s leaned yes too. Younger voters, more exposed to the consumer-price consequences of import barriers, look more instinctively free-trade here than their elders, who tilt toward shielding jobs and producers.
Gender cut the other way and more sharply: men backed quotas 10 to 6, women rejected them 4 to 2. It is a small female sample, but the divergence echoes a familiar pattern on this platform, where economic nationalism plays better with men than women, whatever the specific policy on the table.
Steel quotas may sound like a technical trade matter, but the coalition backing them here looks like the coalition that has long backed managed trade over open markets — older, male, protectionist by instinct.
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