The British establishment has to understand why the public is cynical about appeals to patriotic duty
At some unspecified point last week, Chief of the Defence Staff Roly Walker made the latest in a now regular schedule of interventions by senior British defence figures to shift the focus of the nation onto matters of war. Despite only being recorded by BFBS, a media platform better known for relaying episodes of Antiques Roadshow and Escape to the Country to bored British personnel stationed in places unblessed by such cultural offerings, Walker’s words were clearly intended to make a public stir.
These followed remarks made by the Defence Secretary Wes Streeting earlier in the month, which themselves echoed a similar statement made earlier in the year by his predecessor John Healey; to momentous political effect, just before the Labour_DefenceSecretary.exe programming was uninstalled from his brain and transferred to that of his successor. Walker’s predecessor as CDS, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, used his annual lecture at RUSI in December to make the point that the public needed to prepare itself for the prospect of a major war. The First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins had spoken in similar terms at the Defence and Security Equipment expo in 2025.