Labour's attempts to coerce young people to serve their country will fall on deaf ears, warns Paul Embrey

Labour's attempts to coerce young people to serve their country will fall on deaf ears National solidarity and community are 'quickly evaporating' Sign up to the Membership Newsletter Email address Sign up I agree to receive updates and information about my account, the GB News Community, and related products and services from GB News. By signing up you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy and Community Rules. Thank you for signing up! See the latest from GB News here . Choose GB News on Google - add us as a preferred source Choose GB News Support GB News Champion free speech and independent journalism while unlocking exclusive benefits. Support us There was no shortage of young British men willing to enlist in the armed forces at the outbreak of two world wars last century. When the call came in 1914, groups of pals up and down the country practically skipped to their local recruiting offices. And when, a couple of decades later, Hitler had his jackboot on Europe’s neck, the next generation signed up in huge number and with similar enthusiasm. Not that there’s anything especially British about the desire to fight for one’s country. History shows us that all over the world, young men, driven by an innate patriotism, have time and again thrown themselves forward in a great national effort to defend all they hold dear. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say It would be nice to think that, were Britain faced with invasion by some foreign foe, our young generation would again rally to the cause. But surveying the country today, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the type of national solidarity that inspired so many to step up in the past is quickly evaporating. Troublingly, some of our public leaders appear utterly oblivious to this fact. Almost daily we witness establishment voices, including politicians and military chiefs, banging the war drums in their deranged attempt to provoke some sort of conflict with Russia. Do none of them realise that we are no longer the nation we were even 20 years ago, let alone last century? Wes Streeting was announced as Andy Burnham's Defence Secretary | GETTY The latest such voice belonged to General Sir Roland Walker. In a video that went viral this week, General Walker could be seen addressing hundreds of soldiers during a visit to Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire. In a speech filled with war-like rhetoric, General Walker claimed that “ the business of soldiering is coming back into the nation’s psyche” and spoke of a need for Britons to make “sacrifices” in the cause of taking “the fight to the enemy”. What the General meant by "sacrifices" wasn’t entirely clear. Maybe he means a willingness to pay higher taxes to fund a war effort. Or perhaps he means citizens being prepared to fight physically. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS Nigel Farage backs deploying British Army if 'intolerant' left holds French-style riots in UK 'War could be coming!' Kemi Badenoch urges Britons to get off benefits and prepare for conflict Javier Milei once again rules out 'military solutions' to seize the Falkland Islands General Sir Roland Walker issued a warning | GETTY After all, it’s hard to see how a war against Russia wouldn’t require manpower beyond that which currently exists in the regular armed forces, which, frankly, have been stripped to the bone in recent decades. Either way, General Walker is seriously overstepping his authority. It is not the duty of high-ranking military officers to make a public argument for going to war. Neither is it their role to tell us how those wars should be funded. These are decisions which are properly the responsibility of elected politicians. The job of military chiefs is simply to make sure their respective services are ready to fight if the government of the day calls upon them to do so. Putin's troops remain bogged down in Ukraine | REUTERS Needless to say, General Walker’s words were amplified with enthusiasm by his fellow sabre-rattlers. Now let me be clear: I have no liking at all for the tyrant Vladimir Putin, and it is certainly possible that he is prosecuting some sort of "hybrid war" against Britain, though much of that will inevitably be a response to our own, and Nato's, meddling on his borders. But the suggestion, peddled by many among Europe’s ruling elites, that Putin, whose troops remain bogged down in Ukraine after four and a half years of war, is somehow hell-bent on resurrecting the Russian Empire and marching his armies across the entire continent has always been arrant nonsense. It seems, though, that, in the minds of some establishment figures, war is already as good as declared, and all that matters now is to get the rest of the nation to fall into line. Perhaps they will in the near future make some kind of General-Kitchener-style “Your country needs you” call to arms. But if they did – especially if it meant fighting and dying in some far-off foreign land – I fear they may be shocked at the reluctance to heed the call. The British Army has been made to cut down on training exercises amid a £30million funding gap | MOD Frankly, who could blame any young working-class bloke from the hard-edged provinces of Britain for being less than willing to put his life on the line in a manufactured war against Russia? What exactly would he be fighting for? A nation whose establishment, populated as it is by liberal-progressive overlords, has abandoned him and routinely looks down on him; believes he is imbued with the twin evils of “toxic masculinity” and “white privilege”; has stolen from him the prospect of a meaningful job or apprenticeship in a stable, prosperous industry and forced him to rely on precarious work in the gig economy; made it virtually impossible for him to acquire a decent, affordable home; transformed his hometown beyond recognition and in a way that has caused deep cultural alienation; and at every opportunity trashes the history and traditions of the country which it now demands he go out and defend? Good luck with that one. I suspect that, if his ruling class called on him to put his life on the line in a war against Putin, that young working-class British bloke might ask himself which of the two parties had caused him the most grief and conclude it wasn’t the latter. But this isn’t just about Russia. When it comes to war generally, whoever the enemy and whatever the justification, citizens are more likely to risk their lives in the service of their country if they share a national story and the highest levels of social solidarity, trust, and cohesion. If the nation’s establishment has spent many years eroding those things, it may find itself left with a citizenry which feels it has little to fight for or defend. That is essentially the difference between the Britain that existed in 1914 and 1939 and the one that exists in 2026. That’s why attempts by political and military leaders to dragoon our young people into a contrived war are likely to fall on deaf ears. The Britain of the 20th century has gone. 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