Under pressure from Trump and NATO, the government has announced plans to increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP over the next decade. This would mean earmarking more than £10 billion extra every year. While department ministers battle with the Chancellor over their allocation, next week’s Spending Review will see big rises in the budget allocation for the Ministry of Defence at the expense of others.
Government figures have attempted to promote this as a form of ‘Military Keynesianism’ – a way of growing the economy by increasing public spending. But as many economists have pointed out, the ‘multiplier’ (the ripple effect on the rest of the GDP) is much smaller for defence than it is for education, housing and other public services and a few armament factories in the north of England won’t reverse post-industrial decline. The focus also appears to be on modernising and enhancing capabilities rather than significantly increasing the size of the military. The Strategic Defence Review warns that increasing personnel can only be prioritised when funding allows.
Nevertheless, children in Britain will be taught about the importance of the armed forces in school. While there will be no change to the national curriculum – which is currently being ‘reviewed’ anyway, the MoD has been asked to work with the Department for Education on increasing awareness of military careers. The plans include a suggestion that army reservists visit schools and speak to children about working in the military.
School-leavers will also be offered the chance to experience military life by joining the Armed Forces during a paid gap year before they go to university. But the government also wants to boost recruitment to cadet forces by 30% by 2030, with an ambition to reach 250,000 in the longer term. There are around 51,000 pupils in the school-based “Combined Cadet Force”. (There are also more than 88,000 ‘community cadets’, which includes adults.) The CCF is sponsored by the MOD and sub divided into Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army and Royal Air Force sections. Its aim is to “provide a disciplined organisation in a school so that pupils may develop powers of leadership by means of training to promote the qualities of responsibility, self-reliance, resourcefulness, endurance and perseverance”.
Though there are CCF contingents in over 500 secondary schools across the UK, these antiquated practices are traditionally associated with top private schools. Just 1 in 13 state secondaries are registered to offer a programme, though there’s is no reliable data on how many of these actually run. The peak age for membership is around 14. Reaching the government’s 30 per cent expansion target would require an additional 15,300 school-based cadets, having obvious staffing and budgetary implications for state schools, even if they were prepared to proceed down this route.
Yet polling has found 50% per cent of the public supported expanding cadet forces to more schools, with respondents believing this would boost young people’s health and build a “greater sense of national duty”. But while MPs and ex-military leaders persuade themselves that young people would always fight for Britain as a last resort, survey show only 11 per cent of Gen Z would risk their lives for their country in war. With two fifths of those questioned saying they would never fight.
The British army currently has about 71,300 personnel, the lowest number since the Napoleonic era. Of these, only 55,005 are fully deployable (able to serve without medical restrictions). The army’s target is 73,000. Despite a continued recruitment crisis, the government has ruled out a return to any form of national service. But there’s always the NEETs!
Education, Economy and Society 
Gre