Should the UK reduce its defence spending to fund more on employment, welfare and growth?

The chamber delivered a lopsided verdict, 29 to 5 against reallocating the defence budget, a result close to consensus rather than contest. On a question that pits Starmer's 2.7%-of-GDP pledge against the claim that Britain faces no immediate military threat, the voters overwhelmingly sided with the hawks.

The most striking fracture is not age but gender. Men voted no almost unanimously, 25 of 26, while the five women who took part split four to one in favour of the cut — the only pocket of the electorate here where "yes" actually won. With just five female voters that is a small sample, but the contrast with male near-unanimity is stark enough to note.

Age tells a simpler story: opposition hardened with every cohort from 25 upward, with the 35-44, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+ brackets all recording zero "yes" votes between them. Only the two 16-24-year-olds bucked the trend entirely, both backing cuts to defence — too small a group to draw conclusions from, but a hint of a generational gap on where security spending sits against jobs and welfare.

The result echoes the wider post-2016 pattern where security and sovereignty concerns tend to trump domestic spending trade-offs whenever the two are put head to head — even when, as here, the case for restraint is baked into the question itself.