Britain's elites are in hysterics over looming 'war' with Russia

British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting recently said the U.K. has 1000 days to be “ready with our allies to fight and win.” The enemy is obvious: Russia. The catch: London doesn’t have the cash to fight, and ordinary folk aren’t interested.

This latest reminder that war with our Slavic foes is imminent is vague and unspecified, and frankly tedious. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out nearly a year ago, “rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia.”

Streeting is simply the latest to join the chorus. Earlier in October, he advised British people to stock up on tinned food and bottled water in case of an emergency, a suggestion he has since repeated.

Yet a gap is growing between this war readiness rhetoric and the reality of public finances in Britain. It is evident that the government has little fiscal headroom to increase defense spending rapidly to the NATO target of 3.5% of GDP by 2035. In his annual budget statement last week, Chancellor (and former Defense Secretary) John Healy said the 3% target would be reached “in the next Parliament,” which could be as late as 2034. Current spending plans suggest U.K. defense won’t go beyond 2.7% this decade.

We can’t afford to expand our army which, at 73,500 troops, is already at its smallest since 1823, according to MoD data. There are more than 700,000 Russian troops in Ukraine alone. When discussions kicked off in March 2025 about a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force for Ukraine, the U.K. armed forces were considered “too stretched” to contribute without cutting back operations elsewhere. A British MP and member of the U.K. parliamentary defense select committee told me we would struggle to put 10,000 troops on the field.

Nevertheless, a concerted campaign appears underway to soften Brits up for the fight. This past weekend, the Spectator put out a piece calling for the reintroduction of mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds. “What we need is a resilient, hardened and capable population, ready for the tough times ahead,” wrote Ted Jeffery. “Not a country with 10 million working-age people on benefits.”

No one talks about how to pay for schemes like this, except, one assumes, to cut back on benefits. Herein lies the guns or butter faultline in British political discussion, which you can also witness in Germany and in France. The state should cut back on public services such as welfare and instead spend money on defense and war readiness.

The protests and riots that have rocked France are not driven by concerns about the risk of war, but rather about the dilapidation of the school system. This past weekend has also seen riots across Germany about the cost of living. Former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s suggestion that she would back Ukraine “no matter what voters think” helps explain why increasing numbers of Germans are turning to parties such as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Foreign policy starts and ends at home. Ordinary folk spend little time thinking about foreign policy and assume that their governments will focus on domestic concerns. That gives elected leaders considerable scope to cut a dash on the world stage in the face of public indifference. However, it does not offer carte blanche to put foreign issues first.

In Britain, the public doesn’t appear remotely interested in fighting a foreign war. A recent poll by Ipsos found that 48% of Britons would not agree to fight “under any circumstances” while only 36% might be willing.

Indeed, the most interesting observation was that the age group most willing was the over 55s. This cohort might get its chance as last week the government announced it had updated its policies determining that reservists up to 65 years of age could be reactivated "to strengthen UK readiness as global threats continue to grow."

The British Foreign Policy Group’s 2026 Survey also indicated that 52% of Britons would be unwilling, and 58% unable, to fight, with a similar tilt towards the older generation.

The government has made some effort to persuade its citizens to change their minds. In late October, the Head of the Army, Sir Roland Walker, warned that “our citizens have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritize defense and security.” This follows on from the highly publicized remarks on GB News that pro-Russian (read pro-peace) voices should be locked up and conscription should be introduced.

The latter was pure bloviation. The former, an incitement by a serving military officer to put conscription into practice. This was leapt upon by historian Peter Hitchens, who wrote that it was not for serving military officers “to put the case for sacrifices by the voting public. Nor was it for him to tell politicians to explain this to the public.” I heartily agree.

British ministers and pundits never explain where we might meet the Russians in battle after we’ve been press-ganged and put into uniforms. Anyone who believes they are going to romp all the way across Europe and cross the channel to meet us here must be a fantasist. That means we either go into Ukraine, which we have steadfastly avoided doing since 2014, or we send our troops to a NATO country that is attacked, despite the lack of evidence that Russia has any intention of launching such an endeavor.

A more credible, less expensive and less dangerous approach would be to engage in diplomacy to put an end to conflict, rather than allowing it to fester and worsen. With a government too poor to grow the army and with a population unwilling to fight, Britain nevertheless clings to its refusal to talk and engage in diplomacy. At the recent G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, beside a grinning Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski of Poland, used the plenary to lambast Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and declare “you are not winning the war”.

A planned family photo, where the ministers all stand together, was canceled because the Brits and Europeans didn’t want to be in shot with Lavrov. Further proof, sadly, that statecraft in Britain and Europe today resembles a bunch of 10-year-olds squabbling in the schoolyard.