Should the UK use the navy to stop small boat crossings?

Yes won by three to two, but the room’s sharpest contradiction was that its most-respected argument came from No: “commit murder on the high seas” was the warning, while the winning side offered mostly low-rated demands for action. The result was clear; the hierarchy of persuasion was not.

Yes voters treated the crossings as a failure of border control, not primarily a rescue or policing problem. Their language ranged from “A land without a border is not a country” to the more practical claim that the “Navy needs to go there to create physical barrier”, with others arguing that Border Force had become a “taxi service” and that deterrence required turning boats back.

No’s case was narrower and more operational. Its most-respected voice asked whether stopping an unwilling dinghy meant opening fire or running it down, while another called the plan “counterproductive,unless you want to fire on unarmed civilians”; the alternative offered was action at source, against smugglers, suppliers and the demand that sustains them.

The two sides repeatedly talked past each other. Yes voters stressed the scale of arrivals, alleged risks from people whose backgrounds were unknown, and the limits of gang-crackdowns when “demand seems to be massive at the moment”; No voters challenged the leap from nationality to criminality, cited enforcement against organisers, and argued that a naval intervention could make the Channel more dangerous.

So this was a vote for visible control, but not a settled view of what control would require: the chamber endorsed the navy before it resolved the argument over what the navy could safely do.