As the world becomes more unstable, Britain’s ability to defend itself is falling to new depths. The situation has become so bad that senior officials say the public will need to be called up to fight if Britain goes to war.
Signs of this decline have been present for some time. An online war simulation held just two years before Russia invaded Ukraine saw the British Army run out of ammunition after a measly eight days. At the beginning of 2023, then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace warned that the force had been “hollowed out” to such an extent over the past two to three decades that it had “fallen behind its peer group” and should stop “reaching beyond” itself.
Now, General Sir Patrick Sanders, who is head of the Army, warns that the government must “mobilise the nation” in the event of war with another nation. (The papers are all pointing at Russia.) The chief, who is standing down from his position in six months, does not support conscription. Instead, he stresses that there must be a “shift” in the mindset of civilian men and women so that, as The Daily Telegraph put it, they “think more like troops” and are “mentally prepared that war with Russia could happen.”
Figures released this month show that the Army will have fewer than 70,000 soldiers within two years, a drop of 40% since when the Conservatives took office in 2010. Projections in The Times also suggest that the whole Army could fit inside Manchester City’s 53,400-capacity Etihad Stadium in a decade’s time, with more than 1,000 seats left empty.
It is amid this backdrop that military recruiters are considering lowering standards to allow those with hay fever, asthma, and visible tattoos to join the ranks. The Armed Forces could also raise its retirement age to boost numbers, with Tory ministers insisting there is “no philosophical barrier” to stop this.
Some Army officials appear to have attempted to save face by claiming that “the numbers aren’t quite as totemic and as golden as people say.” But this does nothing to address what Wallace this month described as a “real challenge” for the forces; that “Generation Z is not joining the Armed Forces in the way my generation did.” He said that “post-Covid skill shortages in engineering and all sorts of things” have had a particular, more recent impact. Reports have also pointed to changing trends among the nation’s young, such as the fact that Gen Z is too hooked to the smartphone to be interested in working on submarines.
While these failures go unattended, enemy forces are bound to take in British threats with a sense of amusement.