From Welfare to Warfare: Benefit Cuts and Military Conscription

Labour’s Draft of Desperation: Britain’s Young Face a Grim Choice, Poverty or the Front Lines

Eight months into Labour’s reign, you might be forgiven for checking the colour of the rosette pinned to our collective misery. The promised dawn of compassionate governance, the hope, the change has instead revealed itself as the same neoliberal nightmare, only now dressed in red.

While pensioners spent the winter huddling beneath insufficient blankets and food banks stretched their resources beyond breaking point, our self-proclaimed people’s government has found billions to feed the insatiable appetite of distant conflicts. Ukraine receives an open checkbook while our own people receive lectures on fiscal responsibility.

But it’s Labour’s latest scheme that truly reveals the bankruptcy of their moral ledger: pushing unemployed young people into military service while simultaneously cutting their social safety net. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall’s announcement in the Commons represents not merely a policy shift but an ideological capitulation that would make even the most hardened Tory blush.

Kendall told MPs on Tuesday she has held discussions with her local job centre and the military and will hold further talks with the Ministry of Defence to get “this plan into action.”

Kendall confirmed in the House of Commons there will be cuts in benefits and it is her aim to get 642,000 people aged between 16 and 24 that are unemployed to join the military.

She said that welfare system is “holding our country back” and Labour is “ambitious for our people and our country, and we believe that unleashing the talents of the British people is the key to our future success.”

Tory MP Mark Pritchard told MPs, “One way of perhaps attracting some people back into work is for her to have discussions with the Defence Secretary. Would she agree with me that getting more young people into his majesty’s armed forces, air force, navy, army would be a starting place?”

The Work and Pensions Secretary said, “I absolutely agree. Indeed, before I was appointed to this position in opposition, as a constituency MP, I have discussed with my local job centre and the armed forces recruitment precisely these issues because of the really exciting careers and opportunities that are available, I think are really important for young people

“I will certainly be having more discussions with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to make sure we put this plan into action.”

“We will consult on delaying access to the health top up in Universal Credit until someone is aged 22,” Kendall declared with bureaucratic coldness, before cheerfully endorsing a Tory MP’s suggestion to funnel these same vulnerable young people into the armed forces.

Let us be absolutely clear about what this represents: a government that cannot—or will not—create meaningful civilian employment opportunities for its youth is instead offering them as fodder for military recruitment. The message is unmistakable: if you’re young and struggling, your choices are destitution or deployment.

This cynical marriage of benefit cuts and military recruitment isn’t merely callous; it’s a calculated exploitation of economic vulnerability. When basic subsistence is threatened, the steady paycheck of military service becomes less a choice than a necessity.

Those who champion this approach might point to the skills and discipline the armed forces provide. But as an ex-solider myself I have to point out this argument conveniently overlooks that in a functioning society, military service should be a calling, not an economic last resort. The British army once prided itself has an army of volunteers, not conscripts. A government truly committed to “unleashing the talents of the British people” would invest in diverse civilian opportunities—education, apprenticeships, creative industries, and sustainable infrastructure—rather than narrowing the horizons of its youth to the barracks door.

The historical echoes are impossible to ignore. Throughout centuries, economic conscription has been the silent draft that fills military ranks, particularly in times of austerity. The poor have always died in rich men’s wars, but we expect Labour, of all parties, to recognise and resist this pattern rather than enthusiastically embrace it.

Debbie Abrahams, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, gently suggested there might be “more compassionate ways to balance the books rather than on the back of sick and disabled people.” Her understatement speaks volumes about the moral void at the heart of this policy.

What we are witnessing is not governance but the abandonment of governance—a surrender to market forces and military interests that treats young people not as the future of the nation but as problems to be managed, resources to be allocated, bodies to be deployed.

The Labour Party that once stood for the dignity of working people now stands for work at any cost, under any conditions, regardless of dignity. This is not the party of Attlee or Bevan, but a hollowed-out shell where progressive politics once resided.

If this government truly believes in the potential of Britain’s youth, it must invest in their futures rather than weaponising their desperation. Our young people deserve more than to be treated as either burdens on the welfare state or as convenient solutions to military recruitment quotas.

The conscription of necessity is still conscription, and a Labour government that cannot see this has lost not just its way, but its very soul.

Paul Knaggs