FRANK HAVILAND
Governments on the slide often reach for the military flex as a means to bolster support. While the Labour Party may enjoy a large working majority, its popularity plummeted under Keir Starmer. Indeed, Starmer himself tried (and failed) to butch things up, with talk of “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. Given the Burnham bounce is more lead than balloon, the PM may be contemplating similar manoeuvres. He may be right to do so – the polls have Reform, Labour and the Tories neck-and-neck. Putting the country on a war footing could be a smart move, particularly if the rumours of a snap general election are true.
Nonetheless, the optics are hilarious. Compare Britain’s wartime leadership of the 1940s with a current front-bench that couldn’t fight its way out of an open paper bag, and you start to see the folly of such thinking. Still, “Our Andy” and his chums won’t be doing any fighting. Perhaps that’s just as well.
The BBC broke the story on Friday, informing us that war may be coming – and asking, are we psychologically ready? “If the UK suddenly found itself at war, would you know what to do? Do you know what would be expected of you?” This is a curious guilt trip. It rather suggests that responsibility for national security resides with the populace (a populace invariably locked up whenever it actually voices an opinion), and not with the government.
The alarm has been raised by Defence Chief Sir Richard Knighton, who claims the threat from Russia means Britain is “living through the most dangerous period of [his] 35-year career in the armed forces”. How convenient. Apparently, the government wants the public to “prepare for severe disruption”, “stockpile canned food and drinking water”, “strengthen our civic resilience” (whatever that means), and “plan for the possibility of war”.
There are two immediate problems with this. Firstly, the realpolitik of the numbers. When David Cameron came to power back in 2010, the regular Army was almost 110,000 strong. Now it sits at just 72,000 – well short of the capacity of Wembley Stadium, and the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic wars. The kit too is not up to snuff, and when Defence Secretary John Healey was offered less than half the £28 billion increase he wanted earlier in the year, he resigned in protest. This, arguably, is not even our biggest problem.
The British public no longer wants to fight for its country, and likely couldn’t if it tried. In a recent survey, just 6% of British men said they would volunteer in the event of war, with a further 14% prepared to answer the call. As I wrote last year, why on earth would they?
“Thanks to years of Critical Race Theory, feminist claptrap and the self-loathing taught in our schools, the white, working-class male has morphed into nothing short of a national punchbag. To Westminster liberals, they’re ‘toxic’ and ‘privileged’, forced to subsist on crumbling estates while resources are handed over to those with more exotic backgrounds and skin colours. To employers, they provide no commercial value in terms of woke credibility and are therefore passed over for promotion – or excluded entirely. To the authorities, they’re now the only demographic liable to feel the full force of the law.”
Patriotic fervour has been replaced by a soy-boy, chai-latte-sipping effeminacy. Boys and men are told they have “toxic masculinity”, and any men daring to show protective instincts on demand are lambasted as “far-right, outright racists” from the Home Secretary down.
Even assuming you conscript those of fighting age, the pansification of western men is such that it is questionable how effective they would prove. National Service was abolished in the early 1960s, leaving several generations of British men oblivious to self-defence or basic military training. Male testosterone levels across the West have literally halved over the last fifty years – decaying at a relentless rate of over 1% annually. When 52% of those sampled claimed ineligibility to fight (often citing health reasons), perhaps they were doing more than just pulling a sickie.
The irony of course, is why should we go looking for a military opponent abroad when we have one staring us in the face back home? A literal Armada invades Britain on a daily basis along the south coast – an invasion the taxpayer is forced to fund under threat of imprisonment. That’s a war we are spectacularly losing. Worse still, three decades’ worth of relentless mass (legal and illegal) immigration has left the country heavily balkanised. Increasing numbers of our fellow “Brits” not only would not fight for the country, but actively wish for its destruction. As an illustration, more British Muslims have fought for ISIS than serve in the British Army – twice as many in fact.
The question I think we have to ask is: why now? Britain is certainly in sufficiently dire straits to invoke the bogeyman of Russia: economic stagnation, border collapse, and the loss of Uniparty legitimacy. Perhaps the old Thatcher trick of a quick victory in the Falklands could be the thinking – indeed, Javier Milei has laid some of the groundwork for that already. Maybe this is another compliance exercise, like Covid: war used to justify the restriction of movement, a curtailing of civil liberties, and digital ID. Then again, it could simply be a smokescreen for higher taxes, increased borrowing and reckless spending. It’s hard to know when the government is so economical with the truth.
With the likes of former top NATO commander General Sir Richard Sherriff telling us to “think the unthinkable” and former army chief General Sir Patrick Sanders whispering about conscription for WWIII, it’s time for the white, working-class men of Britain to acquiesce and play the hand they have been dealt. Having spent decades being written out of their own island story, blamed for all of society’s ills, and lambasted whenever they attempt to protect their women and children, it’s surely time for someone else to step into the breach?
Seeing as “diversity is our greatest strength,” let’s put the slogan to the ultimate test. Let’s see how many feminists truly believe in equality; how many ‘trans-men’ sign up for battle; how many foreign nationals genuinely love the country enough to bleed for it. That should prove a sufficient litmus test for the multicultural experiment.
So thanks Shabana, but no thanks. You lot can fight them elsewhere; we’ll stay fighting them on the beaches.
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Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.
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(UKR)
