The Slow Normalisation of Militarisation: Inside the UK’s New Defence Scheme A Gap Year in Uniform

A Gap Year in Uniform?

“Militarised Keynesianism isn’t an industrial strategy, it’s a business model that requires permanent WAR to stay profitable…”

The government has announced a new “gap year” scheme offering young people a short, paid taste of life in the Army, Navy or RAF. It’s being sold as an opportunity. In reality, it reads more like a sticking plaster over a much deeper wound.

Let’s be honest about what’s going on.

We’re told 150 young people will be recruited in the first year, with vague promises of growth later. No clear pay. No clear career pathway. No clarity on what they’ll actually be doing beyond basic training and “teamwork”. Even senior military figures admit it will make only marginal difference to the UK’s actual defence capacity.

This is not a bold new vision for defence, nor a revival of national purpose. It is an unguarded confession that the armed forces are hollowed out, struggling to recruit, struggling to retain, and paying the price for decades of cuts, overstretch, and a political class that treats service personnel as expendable line items. Rebranding this failure as “opportunity”, wrapping it in talk of skills, training and character-building, does not change the underlying reality. It merely disguises decline as aspiration.

This is FEAR.INC at work. The slow manufacture of consent, the steady drip-feed of threat and urgency, until the public is nudged towards accepting Military Keynesianism as inevitability rather than choice. A permanent state of readiness for a phoney war, where anxiety replaces strategy and spending replaces thinking. The story must keep moving, the enemy must remain fixed, and doubt must be disciplined out of the public mind.

Then Orwell lands like a gavel.

was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control.

Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. – George Orwell, 1984

This is part of our determination to reconnect society with our forces, and drive a whole of society approach to our nation’s defence.

https://t.co/Fc5MuQ9BEB

— John Healey (@JohnHealey_MP) December 27, 2025

And yet the language is telling.

A “whole-of-society approach”.
A “new era” of defence.
Preventing confrontation with Russia.

What this really looks like is the slow normalisation of militarisation, nudging working-class young people towards uniformed service while the same government offers them shrinking prospects elsewhere. No serious industrial strategy. No secure jobs. No housing. No future. Just discipline, resilience, and problem-solving skills “for life”.

It’s also worth noting what this scheme doesn’t do.

• It doesn’t fix pay and conditions for existing troops.
• It doesn’t address why people are leaving in droves.
• It doesn’t restore hollowed-out regiments or capacity.
• And it certainly doesn’t amount to a “national defence strategy”.

As ever, the burden is placed on the young, while political leaders talk tough from behind press releases.

Labour Heartlands has always supported those who serve. Many of us come from military families. We know the value of discipline, comradeship, and public service. But we also know when service is being used as a substitute for a proper social contract.

If the government wants young people to believe in the future of this country, it should start by giving them one worth believing in.

• Skills without security aren’t opportunity.
• Uniforms without strategy aren’t defence.
• And spin won’t fill the ranks where trust has been broken.

Manufacturing Fear to Fund a War Economy

A strong economy needs a strong national defence.

Under a Labour Government that is what we will deliver. pic.twitter.com/R3z927gtkJ

— Rachel Reeves (@RachelReevesMP) March 26, 2025

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”

– Albert Einstein

Of course, this is all part of the bigger picture. You can hear the drumbeat if you listen closely. It’s getting louder, faster, more insistent. The establishment and their media stenographers are busy building consensus, turning the volume up on fear, and preparing the ground. Preparing it for the only answer they ever seem to offer: more of your public money flowing into the industrial arms complex.

FEAR INC. offers "A gap year for war…"

'Sons and daughters' in the UK may need to be ready to fight amid growing Russian threat…

The Chief of the Defence Staff has warned the UK's 'sons and daughters' may need to be ready to fight, following a separate speech from the Head… pic.twitter.com/kOHISzGGqL

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) December 27, 2025

Again, this doesn’t happen in one dramatic announcement. It’s done through a steady drip, drip of anxiety. The threat is always “at the gates”. Not here yet, but close enough to demand urgency. Close enough to shut down doubt. Fear becomes the background hum of everyday life, until militarisation feels normal and questioning it feels irresponsible.

That’s how war economies survive. Not through necessity, but through manufactured consent.

This isn’t a gap year.
It’s just another gap in Labour’s vision.