Should the UK scrap its digital services tax to avoid US tariffs?

The most striking thing about this vote is how thin the argument for scrapping the levy actually was: only 57 of 143 backed capitulation to Washington's threats, and not one of them left a word to explain why. On a question that hinges on a live trade dispute, the yes side simply went quiet, leaving the floor's only sympathetic case to come, oddly, from a no voter who half-conceded the tax's logic while doubting the whole premise of the standoff.

The no camp, by contrast, argued with some conviction, and the chamber's most-respected line kept it simple: "Keep saying it equalise tax so same for everyone." A second no voter pushed further into principle, insisting "if you earn money in this country you should be taxed on it, regardless of where you are based," and dismissed the tariff threat itself as noise that "will blow in the wind what ever we do." Between the two sides there was barely a debate at all — one asserted fairness and sovereignty over tax base, the other never showed up to answer it.

That asymmetry echoes a familiar British instinct since 2016: reluctance to let external pressure, whether from Brussels or Washington, dictate domestic tax policy, even when the economic cost of standing firm is real and the EU has already struck the softer deal. Big tech's revenues, and who gets to tax them, remain a fault line the UK seems minded to hold rather than trade away.

For a policy squarely in the crosshairs of a superpower's tariffs, the case for holding firm barely had to be made to win by two to one.