YOU BETRAYED BRITAIN. NOW YOU EXPECT OUR CHILDREN TO FIGHT FOR IT?
TYRELL BOWMAN
The sheer arrogance of Britain’s political establishment. After decades spent dismantling the institutions, traditions, values and national identity that once held this country together, we are now being warned that ordinary British people may have to prepare for conscription and a possible war with Russia.
Apparently, after years of being told that patriotism is suspicious, national pride is problematic and our history is something for which we should endlessly apologise, we may soon be expected to pick up a rifle and die for the very country our leaders have spent a generation undermining.
You really couldn’t make it up.
Let me be clear. The latest warning comes from a security expert, not a formal Labour government proposal. Ministers currently deny any intention of introducing conscription. But the prospect is being discussed seriously, and Britain’s defence establishment is increasingly talking about preparing the entire nation for war.
And that raises a rather uncomfortable question.
Just what, precisely, does the establishment imagine we are supposed to be fighting for?
I ask this as someone who has spent more than forty years involved in British politics. I am a Conservative, a libertarian, a patriot and, until recently, an unapologetic royalist. I believe in Britain, its extraordinary history, its traditions, its institutions and the civilisation our ancestors helped build.
But I no longer believe in the establishment governing it.
And there is an enormous difference.
For decades, successive Conservative and Labour governments have presided over what I regard as the systematic erosion of our national identity. Mass immigration has been pursued without anything approaching the democratic consent or integration strategy such profound demographic change requires. Concerns about its scale and consequences have too often been dismissed as prejudice rather than addressed as legitimate questions of public policy.
Our freedoms have fared little better. Under Theresa May, the Conservatives pursued increasingly expansive counter-extremism proposals that raised serious concerns about lawful expression. Subsequent governments have continued expanding the state’s involvement in policing speech and protest.
Meanwhile, a poisonous intellectual fashion has taken hold across parts of our educational and cultural institutions. Critical theory and its associated progressive orthodoxies increasingly present Western civilisation through a narrow prism of oppression, exploitation and inherited guilt.
Of course, our history contains terrible chapters. Every nation’s does. But Britain also gave the world extraordinary advances in parliamentary democracy, science, law, literature, medicine and liberty.
A generation should be educated to understand its country, not encouraged to be ashamed of belonging to it.
Then there is Tony Blair’s constitutional revolution. Devolution was presented as a means of strengthening democracy and bringing government closer to the people. Instead, I believe it has helped institutionalise competing national political identities, creating new fault lines within the United Kingdom.
And throughout all this, the Conservatives, supposedly the guardians of our constitution and heritage, have frequently proved little more than enthusiastic accomplices.
The party of Churchill and Thatcher became remarkably adept at conserving absolutely nothing.
Even the monarchy, that great symbol of continuity, duty and national unity, has suffered an extraordinary collapse in dignity.
I revered Queen Elizabeth II. She understood something that increasingly seems beyond the grasp of our modern ruling class: privilege carries responsibility, and public service requires personal sacrifice.
Compare that remarkable woman with the spectacle that has followed.
The Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor scandal, his association with Jeffrey Epstein and the eventual removal of his royal titles have inflicted immense reputational damage. Historical allegations concerning Lord Mountbatten, though unproven, have cast further uncomfortable shadows. Harry and Meghan’s public disputes with the Royal Family have hardly enhanced its dignity.
And King Charles, for all his virtues, has too often seemed more comfortable with fashionable causes than with reassuring traditionalists who look to the Crown for stability. His earlier remarks about being a defender of faith, rather than simply Defender of the Faith, became symbolic of that anxiety, even though he ultimately retained the historic title.
I say this with genuine sadness. I am a royalist watching an institution I once revered struggle to justify the extraordinary trust placed in it.
And now, against this backdrop of institutional decay, we are apparently supposed to prepare our children for war.
War with Russia, no less.
Let me make another distinction. Vladimir Putin’s aggression is real. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is indefensible, and Britain must maintain credible armed forces capable of protecting our territory, our people and our allies.
But supporting national defence does not require handing politicians a blank cheque written in the blood of our children.
Britain’s military has been hollowed out by successive governments. The regular Army numbered just 73,660 personnel in July 2026. Governments spent years reducing military capacity, congratulating themselves on peace dividends and treating defence as an inconvenient expense.
Now, faced with the consequences, the conversation turns towards the mobilisation of ordinary citizens.
How terribly convenient.
The people who made the decisions will not be the ones crawling through frozen trenches. Their children are unlikely to be the first asked to storm some fortified position in Eastern Europe.
It will be the sons and daughters of ordinary families. The very people who have spent years being told that their concerns about immigration, sovereignty, national identity and freedom of expression are backward or unacceptable.
And here lies the fundamental problem.
A nation cannot demand unlimited loyalty from a population whose trust it has systematically squandered.
Patriotism is not an automatic obligation owed to whoever happens to occupy Downing Street. It is a profound attachment to a people, a homeland, a shared inheritance and a future worth protecting.
I would defend Britain. I would defend my family, my home, my neighbours and the liberties that generations fought to secure.
But I will not unquestioningly surrender my sons to an establishment that has demonstrated such contempt for so much of what I hold dear.
Nor should any parent be expected to do so without the most compelling justification imaginable.
If Britain itself were invaded, that would be an entirely different matter. Defending one’s homeland against conquest is not the same as being conscripted into a wider conflict whose objectives, necessity and political leadership have not earned public confidence.
And that distinction matters enormously.
The tragedy is that Britain still possesses everything necessary to become a great and confident nation again. Its people are capable, generous, courageous and resourceful. Its heritage is magnificent. Its potential remains extraordinary.
What it lacks is leadership worthy of those qualities.
Before any government even contemplates demanding the ultimate sacrifice from its citizens, it should begin by rebuilding the national unity, constitutional freedoms, military strength and public confidence that successive administrations have allowed to deteriorate.
Restore respect for our country. Restore the freedoms that make it worth defending. Restore confidence in our institutions. And above all, remember that politicians serve the people, not the other way around.
Because there is one thing Britain’s establishment needs to understand.
You cannot spend decades making people feel like strangers in their own country and then expect them to march obediently into battle when you sound the bugle.
Loyalty is earned. Trust is earned. And the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s country is perhaps the greatest expression of that trust.
Our political establishment has taken it for granted for far too long.
And if it believes it can simply demand it back, it has another thing coming.
(UKR)