Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment to increase the UK’s defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2027 is a small but welcome step in the right direction. As the United States withdraws from its historic post-war role as world policeman and guarantor of European security, the UK and its European and Western allies must pick up the slack.
However, his accompanying pledge to boost the number of military personnel via, inter alia, the doubling of the British Army’s recruitment budget to £17.2 million is not nearly enough to offset the great reluctance of the UK’s young men and women to fight for their country. In April 2024 the army fell below its recruitment target for the first time.
Lord Hammond – former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Defence Secretary from 2011 to 2014 – attested to the current crisis in a recent podcast published by the investment bank Peel Hunt. “There is no point spending lots of money on defence equipment if you haven’t got any men to press the buttons, and we are unable to recruit even to the rather paltry scale army that we currently have”, he said. The current Armed Forces Minister Luke Pollard agrees, even if he predictably blames the last government, of which Lord Hammond was a long-serving member. “We inherited a retention and recruitment crisis,” he says, with little acknowledgement of the research and deep thinking required to understand the variables responsible.
Recent polls also bear witness to the unwillingness of our nation’s youth not only to fight for their country, but to defend it from invasion. According to an UnHerd poll to mark 80 years since D-Day, published last year, only 29% of 18-24 year-olds said they would defend Britain in the event of an invasion. In addition, just 21% of parents would want their children to fight in such circumstances – 67% would urge them not to get involved. Moreover, in a YouGov and Public First survey for the Times, published in February this year, only 11% of Generation Z, aged 18-27, said they would fight for Britain; 41% said there were no circumstances in which they would take up arms for their country.
These are indeed sobering statistics. The recruitment crisis expressed by Lord Hammond and Luke Pollard is being fuelled by the profound reluctance of our young men and women to join the military and fight for their country. Until the Government finds out why and addresses the factors responsible, the recruitment crisis will persist, and with it, the nation’s extant and growing vulnerability to attack.
The reasons are myriad and complex, but not impossible to discern. For example, our young people do not want to defend what they despise. In the same survey cited above, half of Generation Z believe Britain is racist and only four in 10 say they are proud to be British. This shows that the age group most likely to provide new recruits is predominantly unpatriotic and, with patriotism being a precondition for anyone’s decision to sign up, its members are therefore unwilling to fight for King and Country.
But where does this lack of patriotism come from? Well, as a secondary school teacher for over 20 years, I have watched in horror as my colleagues design curricula that can only be described as self-loathing, anti-British, ahistorical agitprop. Our universities are well-documented hives of post-colonial, post-modernist propaganda, brainwashing graduates before sending them out as missionaries to spread the sacred word of “Woke”. And let’s not forget our cultural elites in the arts and media, as well as our politicians. They have pushed every banal left-wing shibboleth on an exhausted and suffocated public for years. From our schools to our universities, our televisions to our newspapers, and our politicians to our footballers, the British people have been force-fed a diet that – implicitly and often explicitly – accuses them of racism, sexism, transgenderism, ableism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and xenophobia. No wonder our young people are demoralised. No wonder they feel little loyalty for their native country. No wonder they view the country as divided – only 15% of young adults see the UK as united, down from 60% in 2004.
The British state has also demonised and discriminated against white men, the Armed Forces’ most important demographic. A recruitment crisis is therefore no surprise. According to the UK Armed Forces Biannual Diversity Statistics for April 2024, ethnic minorities only accounted for 11.2% of the UK Regular Forces and 6.4% of the Future Reserves; women accounted for 11.7% of the UK Regular Forces and 15.9% of the Future Reserves. So, clearly, white men make up by far the largest proportion of armed services’ personnel.
Yet they are the victims of discrimination. In the summer of 2023, for example, a non-statutory inquiry commissioned by Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston concluded that the Royal Air Force unlawfully discriminated against white men in a recruitment campaign aimed at boosting diversity. The inquiry was launched after Group Captain Lizzy Nicholl was forced to resign because she refused to implement an order to fast-track ethnic minority and female recruits at the expense of white men in 2020 and 2021. In one indicative email, white men seeking a career in the RAF were described as “useless white male pilots”.
Furthermore, a recent army recruitment video featured a Muslim man praying, a totem of the multicultural paradigm that views white men as toxic, Britishness as problematic, and our inherited Christian culture as both antiquated and redundant. Under such intense and sustained persecution, why would any white man wish to join the British Army? Clearly many are voting with their feet.
They aren’t just the victims of discrimination in the military, either. Just this week we’ve seen West Yorkshire Police block applications from white British recruits to its entry programmes in a bid to “boost diversity”. Last week, moreover, at the nth hour, we witnessed the Sentencing Council reluctantly suspend plans to privilege ethnic and religious minorities within the criminal justice system. The pervasiveness of anti-white discrimination is clear and, dare I say it, becoming institutionalised, leading to a visceral sense of betrayal among white British men – particularly working-class white British men – who are the backbone of our Armed Forces.
To add insult to injury, our returning heroes are often treated with shabby disregard and conspicuous ingratitude by the state they are deployed to protect. British veterans are doggedly pursued by the courts, in some cases for alleged crimes committed over 50 years ago. In March, a former British soldier came before a court accused of the murder of Patrick McVeigh in May 1972. Another defendant is currently awaiting trial accused of two murders on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in January 1972. In contrast, former IRA terrorists have sat in the Northern Ireland Assembly and shaken the hand of the late Queen. The current Attorney General Lord Hermer KC has even represented former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in a legal case. That veterans would see these instances as acts of betrayal is an understatement. That future recruits aren’t aware of at least a whiff of them is both condescending and naïve. If the British state wants a strong military manned by committed, patriotic troops, eager recruits proud to serve their country, it needs to treat its veterans with respect and gratitude, and its enemies with caution.
Sir Keir Starmer can raise defence spending, he can even increase the recruitment budget, but the crisis will persist unless he addresses the root causes. The state’s indifferent, if not contemptuous, attitude to national pride and patriotic sentiment has manifested itself in the nation’s youth which, consequently, anathematises the very idea of defending one’s country. It has also led to an assault upon the indigenous white British, both inside and outside the defence establishment, and alienated the military’s most important constituency. Finally, the same unpatriotic disdain leads to the state persecuting its heroes and defending its villains. This raises the question: under such circumstances, why would anyone fight for Britain?
Joe Baron is the pseudonym of a history teacher at a London secondary school.
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This is how a woke biased country shoots itself in both feet over a space of just a few years, fighting for the country you are taught to despise is non starter
Maybe the youth can be shown how to put flowers down the barrels of their invaders guns!
The topic of ‘Defence’ is a very large one! It is interesting that we have a ‘Ministry of Defence’ as a part of the state but not, apparently, a ‘Ministry of Attack’! Could there be some loaded words used against us here, un petit peu of subliminal propagandising brainwashing speak perchance?
If we closed the ‘Ministry of Attack’, disbanding the paraphernalia of destruction and sanctified killers, and replaced it with a measured system of ‘home defence’ would it be infinitely improbable to think that it could not just be sponsored by a willing public – if such an organisation was really needed at all?
I say people need more imagination. I say we did not know how the cotton would get picked, the tobacco harvested or the sugar-cane cut when we said that slavery was an inhuman outrage. We did not know. We did not imagine robotic machines could do the work at a lower cost than unpaid men. And if slavery had continued maybe those machines would never have emerged.
The ingenuity and imagination of mankind knows no bounds except for the limitations imposed upon us by those who would shackle us to the feudal tithe gathering system that is the state.
Historically it was the War Office, along with the Home Office, The Foreign Office, and the Treasury, until the civil service expanded a bit.
It’s ironic that a Labour government, whose party is wholly responsible for kicking off the phobia mania under Blair, and is in power because most people could not find it in themselves to vote for any meaningful alternative now finds themselves in a predicament of their own making.
But really, why would any person not celebrate a repeat of November 1688?
Brilliant, powerful article by Joe Baron, who sums it up perfectly:
“Finally, the same unpatriotic disdain leads to the state persecuting its heroes and defending its villains.”
Well done to Joe Baron for also remembering that unsung heroine, Royal Air Force Group Captain Lizzy Nicholl, forced to resign for acting with real courage, moral principles and integrity in defence of others.
To this list of appalling injustices can be added the inferior housing given to military families, while housing The Invading Muslim Army of Fake Refugees in luxurious hotels and brand new homes. I remember reading years ago about an English veteran of the Pointless Afghanistan War, who had lost limbs in that war, and yet the local council gave him and his wife and children a flat on the 5th floor of a block of flats with no lifts, only stairs.
Imagine also the horror of wounded veterans returning to the supposed safety of hospitals in their ancestral homeland, only to find that their doctors and nurses were Muslims who hated them.
As for the Northern Ireland War, to his everlasting credit, Boris Johnson did fulfil his promise to stop the outrageous, treasonous persecution of veterans, only to have it all overturned by Keir Starmer’s Labour government, bent on continuing the Vicious, Vindictive, Endless Revenge Lawfare against British Veterans and Loyalists for more than HALF A CENTURY now, while letting every Catholic IRA Terrorist run free.
Yes indeed the contrasting treatment afforded to our veterans and those good for nothing illegal immigrants really boils my piss.
Perhaps these young people are smart enough to realise that the most serious threat by a long way to our nation, and our way of life and those few liberties we still enjoy, comes not from Moscow, peking or even Paris or Brussels, but from Westminster.
Our own government is the most real and present danger we face.
Which of course, is a bit of a problem.
Our common enemy is the government.
Yes, as someone once said, the People of the West need to know one thing:
“Your government hates you.”
Love my country. Fear my government.
I’m hard pressed to find much to save and fight for in this blighted country and Britain overall!
I suppose the defence recruitment programme will be along the same lines as some police divisions favour now ie positive action to prioritise ethnic minority candidates?
To be honest, I think if the Army put up a stall at this event they’d get a fair amount of interest. No shortage of national pride here
. And most appear to be in tip top physical condition;
https://x.com/benonwine/status/1910975021192724825
Oh my word! Is this the rainbow brigade?
Tip top physical condition? I wonder what would happen if any of these sorry figures was ever asked to wring out a freshly washed pair of jeans or carry a 50l sack of general purpose compost for about half a kilometer. Actually, I don’t wonder: The trousers would laugh out loud at such a pathetic attempt and in the other case, the guy would either break in two or throw the towel.
All seriously spindly and underweight. Obscene exposure of lack of exercise and malnourishment.
What a set of useless tw#ts.
I sense a great deal of pride but not necessarily of the type the Army’s looking for, though I don’t doubt they’d be attracted to a man in uniform, lol.
Reminds me of Dick Emery’s little gay fellow.
Sergeant: “Do you think you could kill a man?”
Gay man: “Mmm! Eventually!”
IRA murderer Adams in line for a payout, while British soldiers on the ground, who served in Northern Ireland at behest of unaccountable politicians and senior army officers, get persecuted through the courts for decades.
And now there’s a recruitment problem. Go figure, Sir Two-Tier and mentor Sir Bliar.
Yes, the same Catholic IRA Murderer Adams, who ordered the murder of widowed mother-of-ten-children Mrs. Jean McConville, is now in line for “compensation” from the British Taxpayers, never having been punished for any of his horrific terrorist atrocities.
Few will remember Mrs. Jean McConville, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism after marrying a Catholic man, with whom she had ten children, but her natural human compassion cost her her life.
In 1972, she had tried to help a wounded British soldier who had fallen outside her garden gate after the IRA had shot him, and for that “crime”, she was kidnapped by night and dragged to a beach, where she was shot in the back of the head and buried in the sand.
“After her disappearance, McConville’s seven youngest children, including six-year-old twins, survived on their own in the flat, cared for by their 15-year-old sister Helen. According to them, the hungry family was visited three weeks later by a stranger, who gave them McConville’s purse, with 52 pence and her three rings in it.”
Her body was not found until 2003.
““There was only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed,” says Brendan Hughes. “That man is now the head of Sinn Féin. I did not give the order to execute that woman – he did. And yet he went to see her kids to promise an investigation into her death.”
“I never carried out a major operation without the okay or the order from Gerry. And for him to sit in his plush office in Westminster or Stormont or wherever and deny it…”
New informer evidence in infamous IRA execution case | IrishCentral.com
Thank you for that damning background detail.
It’s horrific, isn’t it? I forgot to add that she was actually kidnapped by FOUR CATHOLIC IRA FEMALE TERRORISTS, who smuggled her across the border into Southern Ireland.
Where are they now, I wonder? In top positions in the government?
“In 1999, the IRA gave information on the whereabouts of her body in the region of County Louth, at the south-eastern tip of the Cooley Peninsula, in the Republic of Ireland. This prompted a prolonged search, co-ordinated by the Republic of Ireland’s police force, but no body was found.
On the night of 26 August 2003, a storm washed away part of the embankment supporting the west side of Shelling Hill Beach car park, near the site of previous searches. This exposed the body. On 27 August, it was found by passersby while they were walking on Shelling Hill Beach (also known as Templetown Beach). McConville’s body was positively identified and subsequently reburied beside her husband Arthur in Holy Trinity Graveyard in Lisburn.”
Murder of Jean McConville – Wikipedia
Maybe the idea is to portray the indigenous populous as weak, cowardly and feckless but the young men who struck-out to come here, against all odds, rugged and independent, are feisty, determined, courageous. Yes our great leader, Sir Kia Electric, will offer them a deal. Serve in the British Military and earn your citizenship, with honour. A trove of valiant brave young heros stand ready in of midsts. The Shirkers these boat boys will not be.
Not a single Third World Ethnic should ever have been allowed to enter the Armed Forces of the West.
As the Bible says, “NEVER LET THE ENEMY INTO THE CAMP”.
I wouldn’t fight for this country. But i did look into volunteering for the IDF (im in my 50s). The only roles available for foreigners were in field kitchens . For which you have to pay $1500 for traininhg.
Would everyone feel safe if the diversity quotas were introduced at all levels in the armed forces. For example, it has been said that in the past decade there have been more British Muslims joining overseas terrorist groups than have joined the British armed services (the precise numbers have been disputed but the orders of magnitude are certainly comparable).
The whole point of having a professional army based on the Regimental system is that soldiers fight for their comrades, their Regiment and their monarch, in that order.
A simple reform of the recruiting system, improvements in terms and conditions during the present economic downturn, delegation of powers, particularly recruitment, back down to Regimental level and numbers will soon pick up, particularly if there is a chance of a bit of action.
That has been the recipe for success since about 150 BC.
Bring back the county regiments.
Indeed it has, and the implementation of diversity quotas would likely destroy that esprit de corps.
Not to forget that in the old days they used to fight for God too. He does after all feature in the Oath of Allegiance.
Why would anyone risk their lives to defend the Islamic Republic of Britainistan?
And as we know, this is a plan that’s been underway for quite some time, courtesy of the Uniparty;
”Explosive leaked video of David Cameron exposes the Tories’ sinister plot to hand UK leadership to Muslims!
We’ve been screaming about this plan forever, and people had the nerve to call us conspiracy theorists!
The Islamic takeover is real and happening—doesn’t matter who you vote for, every party’s in on it!”
https://x.com/TheNorfolkLion/status/1910708510263824700
Wow— this is absolutely staggering! Good find!
Hiding in plain sight all these years. Now we know.
Thanks Mogs.
I’m still flabbergasted. I do remember years ago Cameron saying that Parliament was “too white”. Who could have guessed to what extremes he was prepared to take that?
Wow!
Just WOW !!!
You’ve got to be a bit careful on Twitter because many videos can be dubbed and manipulated courtesy of AI, but it’s been up a few days and circulating without being ‘Community Noted’, so I’m just assuming it’s legit. Certainly sounds it.
I may be a little bit old fashioned but I think the last thing we need is more Muslims in our country.
I cannot get my head around our government’s obsession with them.
“Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment to increase the UK’s defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2027 is a small but welcome step in the right direction.”
This means diddly squat. As Viv Nicholson memorably commented…”spend, spend, spend.”
Kneel is probably the greatest waster / spender this country has ever witnessed. It is extremely probable that increasing spending on defence could make the British situation worse than it already is.
Gaslighting and nothing more.
To devote so many words to 2Kier’s puff about rearmament is to give it far too much credit for being serious.
Who would want to invade the UK? What resources does it have that others are desperate for? All its industries and infrastructure either has already been sold to others or else can be in a globalised arrangement.
What foreign government would want to manage the British population under occupation? The UK already has had the metric system and decimal coinage imposed on it by its own rulers, as Napoleon would have done had he been able to cross the Channel.
Why would a foreign government want to manage over two million people on long-term sickness disability benefit? Or be responsible for stopping shoplifting or the activities of the ‘grooming gangs’, and incurring the displeasure of the occupied if they didn’t? Or take onboard the vast debts of the utility companies as well as their failure to operate much of a basic functionality?
Much better let the country’s own elected take the heat over all that while a member of the Royal Family visits Ukraine, doing ‘defence’ vicariously, and the Chief of the Defence Staff hobnobs in Peking as representatives of the Westminster satrapy.
It may even be the case that now so many manufactured products are produced in China, and, for the same reason, that Net Zero in the UK is only possible with China bearing all the fossil-fuelled industrial pollution (China burning 30% more coal than the rest of the world combined), that war may have been made impossible, as was once argued by Norman Angell in his 1910 book, The Great Illusion. Net Zero, simultaneously the thing that crushes the UK’s independence and makes her dependent on a particular foreign power.
Someone remarked years ago that the Globalist aim was to asset-strip the British Isles and turn it into a Global Theme Park, so that Third World people could pay to come here on tourist holidays, to dress up in British historical costumes and role-play, with the Indigenous as servants.
Hence the plan to “Make Britain A Service Economy” was meant literally.
Most of the UK’s national “income” – increasingly since 1945 – is debt and worthless money printing.
Join the infantry, learn to fight, get ready for civil war.
Well! If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions!
Hell mend them, utter filth the lot of them.
The country is done foe. You’ll have to fight off islamists and African illegals attacking your homes and your people. I hope it teaches us a lesson and then we can have the no-prisoners civil war.
First, we can be near certain that we won’t have minority groups pressing their case for representation on the front line, unlike any other area of society where there is personal gain for themselves. Add to this the wrecking job done by the British establishment, over the past few decades, on the majority of (white ethnicity) British people and culture. The culture of a nation is what defines it. Now that this has been intentionally wrecked, why would anyone wish to fight for the mess that is now the UK? The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by the statistic presented in this article. It is now going to be hard if not impossible to turn this around.
I suggest that every Civil Servant in the MoD, from the Minister down, is automatically enlisted …. so that, in the event the Government (or more likely the EU) declares a war and needs some cannon fodder we will immediately have 64,000 participants.
I’m sure Hammond would like to volunteer himself and his family as well, so that will make 64,0005.
…and MPs and those scroungers in the HoL automatically enlisted…and to the frontline, not some cushy, protected, overseeing office job. I suspect that would radically reduce them baying and voting for a war if their own necks are on the line.
Let’s imagine for a minute that the next war is in a Muslim country (yes, I know, completely unrealistic….. far more likely to be, say, Portugal).
Would you trust all the Muslim squaddies in your Regiment to fight for King and Country …. and not instead launch some “friendly fire” on their own side?
I wouldn’t.
I wonder if the recruitment ads will feature as many blacks as the normal ads?
My son has just left the army after a five year stint. During that time, he talked about the rainbow flag being flown over the parade ground; deployments for his whole battalion being cancelled as a group punishment after a few soldiers indulged in some stupid high jinks with a certain type of lady (as soldiers have done since soldiering commenced thousands of years ago); locked in his room for weeks on end during the covid outrage and generally being subjected to a raft of tedious, pointless and woke-leaning buffoonery. We were disappointed but not surprised when he resigned…
I think part of the reason is being missed and that is that we have too many people who due to the over generosity of our payments to people who do not work or add anything to our country are a complete drain on society. Many of these are immigrants who have no commitment to our country and we would not want in our military and be better off without. I do not include people who for illness or handicap are unfit to work, but there are perfectly fit people who due to government handouts paid for from taxes from the working population who are too lazy to work. Perhaps some of these people should be subject to compulsory service in our military.
This is far too pessimistic an article. Joe baron has overlooked the effect of the inspiring leadership of warmonger Sir Kier Starmer and his deputy Angela Rainer – too say nothing the love that we citizens have for warmongers on the ‘other side’ e.g. the revered Tobias Ellwood.