Why won't Gen Z die for Britain?

Paywalled postscript; Demography is destiny

This piece was originally published for Con Home in January 2024. All articles published elsewhere are published free here; but for paywalled articles & postscripts, subscribe below.

Why won’t Gen Z die for Britain?

That’s the essential question that the former Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, posed in an interview with LBC, telling Nick Ferrari that “Generation Z is not joining the Armed Forces in the way my generation did.”

This comes hot on the heels of the news that the Royal Navy will have to take two existing ships out of service in order to free up enough sailors to man two of its new frigates. England may soon be bound in with the triumphant sea; Admiral Lord West, the former First Sea Lord, has described Britain’s warships as ‘dropping like flies’.

But fundamentally, Wallace is asking the wrong question. The right question is; why would they?

Recruiting Gen Z isn’t just a problem in the UK. The Australian Defence Force is looking at allowing foreign citizens to serve, and looking at using defence exchanges with Pacific countries to boost numbers. Every branch of the US military expect Space Force missed its recruiting goals last year, and enters 2024 with the lowest active-duty numbers since 1941. They have recently reached out to the 1,900 soldiers discharged for refusing the Covid vaccine with information on how to re-apply.

What is it about Gen Z that’s proving so hard to break down?

They aren’t a data-rich generation. But we can largely caveat the argument that Gen Z are ‘power-hungry hedonists’ and a uniquely selfish generation with the fact that the oldest are still only 27. Who isn’t dreaming of being rich, looking for adventure, seeking fun, being successful in their 20s? That is simply the spring of youth.

Gen Z may be turning against woke, but woke is an amorphous concept that covers a multitude of social attitudes. Their anti-woke turn does not, for instance, include feelings of pride in their country.

A 2015 YouGov survey revealed that patriotic feeling in Britain ‘reduces with each generation.’ Although people tend to become more patriotic as they age, the generational gap is so marked that ‘even if a significant proportion of the younger generation turn proud in their old age, this cohort will still be considerably less patriotic than today’s older generation.’

More recent polling shows the trend continues apace. In a 2021 YouGov poll, just 24 per cent said they thought Britain was ‘more something to be proud of’. Thirty-five per cent said it was more something to be ashamed of. Thirty three per cent were ambivalent. Less than 20 per cent of the 18-24 age cohort said they felt Britain was something to take pride it. The number of 18-24 year olds defining themselves as ‘not very patriotic’ is over twice the number of 50-64 year olds. The number defining themselves as very patriotic is barely a tenth.

And who can blame them? They have grown up in a cultural milieu that denigrates Britain’s culture and history to the point that the idea it is even worthy of respect – never mind dying for – is ridiculous. Why would anyone want to defend a nation built on slavery and fuelled by imperial nostalgia? A nation of bootlickers indeed. This may be reinforced by the world events that shaped them; born in the late 1990s and early 2010s, many Gen Zers will have seen the effects of the decades-long war in Afghanistan and Iraq without understanding the reasoning – such as it was.

Conservatives have not just presided over this woke turn of society; they have enabled it. By refusing to tackle intergenerational disparity, they have given the next generations no stake in society. The adage ‘’If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain’ is not true because once you get to 30 you start reading Burke and start thinking he had some great ideas. It is that as you age you build up a store of financial and social capital that gives you a station worth conserving.

How stands the chances of today’s young to live such a life? Answer came there none; they face the biggest fall in living standards on record, the highest levels of public spending since the 1970s and the biggest tax burden since World War Two.

That fall in living standards, of course, doesn’t take into account the single biggest living expense: housing. The average house price is now around nine times the average earnings. The last time it was this high was in 1876.

Faced with spiralling costs, young people are putting off having families later & later. As Sam Dumitriu notes, “If trends continue (and there’s no sign they’re stopping), the average age of a woman giving birth for the first time will be 30 before the end of the decade.”

Given 30 is the age at which female fertility begins to decline, this carries huge problems. Fertility suffers a rapid drop at 35 which, when the average age gap between first and second babies is three years eight months, is close to when families should be having a second child.This does not just have ramifications for Britain’s birth rate, but for the natural conservative turn that comes with having children.

Though Wokeism is not the sole result of economic hardship, it’s possible that many are wielding it as an economic weapon; one study suggested that workplace wokeism is the result of economic competition as middle managers seek to ‘increase their influence and job security.’

There are, of course, other factors in forces recruitment that aren’t downstream of the culture war; the Armed Forces is one of the few areas of the public sector government can’t use its favoured strategy of using immigration as a wage suppressant. The care of veterans is not good enough, pay is not high enough and in an age of high employment the military is not an attractive enough career. Never mind that every time there’s a flare up somewhere – anywhere – Tobias Ellwood gets on TV and reminds us the next Iraq is only one good excuse away.

Conservatives have done nowhere near enough to tackle the widespread denigration of this country’s history and reputation, preferring an endless air war on woke instead of boots on the ground. But if we are not prepared to defend Britain – ‘my country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right’ – why should we expect Gen Z to?

POSTSCRIPT – Demography is destiny