Should young married couples get priority for social housing?

The Yes side barely defended marriage as such. Its arguments kept collapsing into a different question, who counts as British, and members still rejected the idea comfortably.

The most-respected Yes case opened bluntly: “Yes but only if they’re indigenous British.” The other ★ Yes argument was about births, that the policy “would encourage children”. Elsewhere Yes voters stacked on conditions such as UK citizenship and local connection. One Yes voter even conceded “there are more deserving cohorts”.

The most-respected No case was cooler and won the most respect of anything posted: allocation should rest on need, and the state should not be “creating artificial incentives to make possibly ill-advised marriages”. A weary tone ran through the No side. One voter called it “nanny state social engineering” and said the answer was building more social housing. Another asked why homeless people who have waited years should be overtaken because someone got married. A further No voter objected to couples being “coerced into it by the state”.

The nationality theme was not confined to Yes. A few No voters also wanted British nationals or veterans first, but they rejected marriage as the test. That gives the debate an odd shape: much of the support for the proposal was really about immigration, while the objection was about fairness among people in need.

In the end, No voters argued that marital status tells you nothing about who is most in need.