The professional head of the British Army has told the soldiers who would do the fighting that the nation must soon be asked to make sacrifices to strengthen its defence and security. In the same week, an Ipsos survey found that 48 per cent of British adults said there were no circumstances in which they would personally be willing to take up arms for Britain, while 36 per cent said there were circumstances in which they would. And the Prime Minister, pressed at Prime Minister’s Questions on when defence spending will reach 3 per cent of national income, told Kemi Badenoch to wait for the Budget on 28 October.
That is the state of the conversation General Sir Roly Walker, the Chief of the General Staff, says Britain must now have. It is also the state of a Government that has yet to explain in full what those sacrifices would mean for taxpayers, public services and the Armed Forces.
What the general told his soldiers
Sir Roly was addressing around 700 soldiers at Catterick Garrison, drawn from across 1 (UK) Division, the Army’s light, high-readiness global response force, among them paratroopers of the Parachute Regiment and a host of other units.
“You didn’t know this, but our nation is going to need you,” he told them. The world faces “extreme jeopardy”, he said, and “the business of soldiering is coming back into the nation’s psyche”.
The political leaders of the country would soon begin a “frank conversation” with citizens “about just what is going on and where the risk lies”. They would explain, he said, that citizens “have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritise defence and security”. They would need “to consent to allow us to do that, which means sacrifices by them”, and would ultimately be asked “to back us, to back you, to do the one thing that you do, that nobody else gets to do, and that is to take the fight to the enemy.”
Then he told the young soldiers in front of him where the burden would fall. “There is no other environment to my mind where the burden of fighting is placed squarely on the shoulders of our most inexperienced and junior soldiers, than in our land forces. And I’m looking at you because it’s on you that the defence of this nation will rest if, ultimately, you are called to fight.”
A general who has stopped mincing his words
The Catterick address extends a pattern. At the RUSI Land Warfare Conference in June, Sir Roly asked a question that now functions as the Army’s organising principle: “if we knew now that our land forces would be involved in large scale combat operations in, say, 2027, what would we be doing differently now?”
The answer is a restructuring of the force around what he calls the 20-40-40 fighting system, “the three rings of modern lethality”: a fifth of combat power in crewed vehicles and infantry, 40 per cent in reusable drones and uncrewed systems, and 40 per cent in high-volume, single-use munitions. A corps planning cycle that once took 72 hours now takes one, he told the conference, with formations “limited only by the munitions that are available to fire into the sky”. Forces News’ coverage of the same speech also reported his claim that Ukrainian forces are achieving a seven-to-one kill ratio against Russia.
Sir Roly is not speaking alone. Senior military leaders, including the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton, are increasingly vocal about the part the public itself must play in withstanding threats. And the state is quietly preparing: the Government is updating the “war book” so that, for the first time in decades, every department must plan how it would respond in a crisis, work the former armed forces minister Al Carns says will be complete by the end of the year.
The nation the general must ask
Ipsos surveyed 1,090 British adults aged 18 to 75 online between 29 September and 1 October, publishing its findings on 14 October. Almost half, 48 per cent, say there are no circumstances in which they would be willing to take up arms and go to war for Britain, while 36 per cent say there are circumstances in which they would, essentially unchanged from the 48 per cent and 35 per cent recorded in April 2025 despite rising concern about Russia, China and Iran. Men were the only group in which more people said they would fight than would not, at 48 per cent to 40 per cent, according to the poll’s demographic tables reported by Sky News. Most women, and most people aged 35 to 54, said they would not.
Reluctance to take up arms is not hostility to the forces who would do the fighting, still less opposition to defending the country. The same survey found 51 per cent want defence spending increased even if that means extra borrowing, higher taxes or cuts elsewhere, up six points since June 2026, against 12 per cent who want it reduced. Among supporters of an increase, 37 per cent favour spending less on other public services, 36 per cent prefer higher taxes and 18 per cent extra borrowing. The most popular tax option, on 46 per cent, is higher income tax on earnings above £125,000. But willingness to pay has limits: 44 per cent oppose higher defence spending if it means the taxes they personally pay would rise, and 44 per cent oppose it if spending on public services would fall.
Hamish Mundell, an associate fellow at RUSI, cautioned that the figures do not mean the country could not mobilise. The constraint on numbers, he told the Press Association, is not finding people willing to fight but being able to train and equip them, adding: “I can’t see the number of people willing to fight decreasing if the UK started suffering at the hands of a foreign power during a conflict.”
The frank conversation the Government has postponed
The general is clear that levelling with the public is the job of politicians. The record so far is one of deferral.
In February 2025, Keir Starmer’s government announced that defence spending would reach 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, with an ambition of 3 per cent in the next parliament. Four months later, Starmer signed NATO’s Hague summit pledge of 5 per cent of GDP on defence and security by 2035. The alliance commitment has two distinct components: 3.5 per cent for core defence, the military budget proper, and 1.5 per cent for wider defence- and security-related spending such as resilience and critical infrastructure. They are distinct spending categories within the same 2035 commitment, and conflating them flatters any government’s record. What no government has yet produced is a funded path from the spending set out for this parliament to those 2035 commitments.
The cost of that gap landed in the open on 11 June, when John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary, saying the government was unwilling to spend enough on the military. The trigger was the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan, which he said would provide £13.5 billion of extra investment against the £28 billion over four years that officials had judged necessary. When the plan was finally published that month, it set spending on course for 2.7 per cent of GDP by 2027/28, with no firm detail on how increases beyond that date would be achieved. It reaffirmed the ambition, announced by Healey when the Strategic Defence Review was published, of rebuilding the Army to at least 76,000 full-time soldiers in the next Parliament, a bar the force currently sits well below: all three services remain under strength against their targets, a shortfall of around 8,460 personnel, and the pay review body describes trained numbers as “critically short of requirement”.
Six weeks after Healey’s resignation, Andy Burnham entered Downing Street as Prime Minister and made the man who had quit over defence funding his Chancellor on 20 July, with a first Budget fixed for 28 October. His Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, told the Labour conference in Liverpool in September that more spending comes with “choices and trade-offs”, but told his party’s critics on the right “you don’t make your country stronger by making our people poorer”. Streeting gave a “cast iron guarantee” to honour the pledge to NATO allies of 3.5 per cent of GDP on core defence by 2035, and described the force he inherited in words that should be read twice: “The smallest army since the Napoleonic Wars. Every single recruitment target missed. Morale down 20 per cent.”
Streeting blamed the Conservatives for that decline, and closed his conference speech with the promise of “a country ready to fight and a Britain worth fighting for”. The Opposition’s contribution this week was sharper pressure rather than an alternative settlement: Badenoch demanded the 3 per cent date at Prime Minister’s Questions and was told to wait for the Budget, while the shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, argues that welfare spending should be cut to fund defence. Reform UK, for its part, has committed on its own policy platform to 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035.
What the frank conversation must contain
Nobody quoted in this article disputes that the threat is real. What separates the statements from the strategy is money, and dates. The Strategic Defence Review demands ten times the fighting power by 2035. The Defence Investment Plan stops at 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2027/28. The NATO pledge reaches 3.5 per cent on core defence in 2035, seven years past the end of current spending plans, before the wider 1.5 per cent commitment is even counted. What remains missing is a fully funded, year-by-year plan showing how the Government intends to meet its longer-term defence commitments, which departments would bear the costs and what choices taxpayers will be asked to accept.
The Government has a parliamentary majority and, in the Chancellor, a man who has already resigned once over precisely this funding shortfall. Great British PAC’s demand is therefore simple. Ministers must publish a transparent, credible and fully costed defence funding plan that explains how Britain will meet its NATO commitments without concealing the consequences for taxpayers, public services or the Armed Forces. It must cover the spending pledges, the readiness of under-strength forces, the equipment and investment priorities, the timetable to the 2035 targets and the financial choices each of those requires. The responsibility to make that case belongs to the Government. It does not belong to the junior soldiers at Catterick, and it cannot be met by asking a public, nearly half of which says it would not take up arms, to consent to sacrifices no minister has yet costed. On 28 October, the Budget will show whether the warning that cost John Healey his job was meant.
GREAT BRITISH PAC REACTION
Claire Bullivant, Chief Executive Officer of Great British PAC, said:
“These figures are deeply worrying, but I refuse to believe that the British spirit has disappeared. I have far more faith in the people of this country than any opinion poll could ever measure.
“Every day, I see ordinary men and women fighting for Britain in their own way. Some wear our country’s uniform. Others campaign in their communities, challenge those in power, speak out on social media, argue Britain’s corner in online forums and refuse to be silenced when they stand up for what they believe in. They may not carry a rifle, but they carry something just as important: a determination not to give up on their country.
“Britain has never been defined by those who doubt her. We are the descendants of generations who faced extraordinary adversity and refused to surrender. That courage, resilience and love of country have not vanished. They are still there, in millions of patriotic hearts across this nation.
“What Britain desperately needs is leadership worthy of its people. Instead, we have a Labour Government that talks about sacrifice while failing to provide the Armed Forces with the clear, properly funded plan they need. Our servicemen and women deserve better than political dithering, delayed decisions and another promise to wait for the Budget.
“Patriotism cannot be manufactured in Whitehall, and national pride cannot be restored by a Government that seems incapable of understanding why so many people feel disillusioned with the direction of their country.
“But I believe in Britain. I believe in our people. And I believe that when this country is truly tested, the courage that carried us through our darkest hours will rise again.
“The British lion has not lost its courage. It is waiting for leadership worthy of its roar. And no Labour Government should ever mistake the frustration of the British people for a lack of love for their country.”
Richard Thomson, former Royal Marine Commando and National Director of Great British PAC, said:
“The Army chief is warning Britain to prepare for sacrifices. Where is that urgency in the Government’s defence spending?
Our troops cannot defend this country with a soundbite. They need ammunition, working equipment and enough trained people alongside them.
Promises stretching years into the future are no answer to threats we face today.
National security must come first. If ministers believe the danger is growing, their spending decisions must reflect it.
On 28 October, give us funded commitments, firm delivery dates and a clear plan to rebuild our fighting strength.
Our servicemen and women are prepared to put their lives on the line.
The Government must be prepared to give them the resources to do the job.”
