National service and the politics of who is expected to pay

National service is back on the agenda – but not for those who would be required to serve. This article explores the generational asymmetry at the heart of the debate and why young people are refusing a political settlement built on compulsion rather than trust.

Calls to reinforce national service have returned with surprising speed. Framed as a response to growing global instability, the proposal is sold as pragmatic and unifying: a way to rebuild ‘national spirit,’ strength, resilience, and prepare for an uncertain future. But beneath the language of cohesion sits a much simpler political reality. Once again, it is the younger generations who are being asked to absorb the costs of decisions they did not make. 

The conservative proposal would require eighteen-year-olds to complete twelve months of mandatory service, either through military placements or structured volunteering. The details remain vague, the funding contested, and the enforcement unclear. But the shape of the argument is already familiar. In a dangerous world, sacrifice must be shared. Responsibility must be taught. Youth must step up.

Whether or not this specific proposal ever becomes law matters less than the fact that it has returned to serious political discussion at all.

What is striking is not the proposal itself, but who is calling for it. Advocacy for national service overwhelmingly comes from politicians, commentators, and voters well beyond conscription age. Many have never personally experienced national service. None will be personally subject to its consequences. This is not incidental. National service is being proposed by those who will not be required to serve, in response to wars they will not fight. 

This generational asymmetry mirrors patterns we already recognise. Young people are told to accept insecure work, rising rents, and permanent housing exclusion, while older generations benefit from accumulated assets and political power. They are told that there is no money for public services or debt relief, but unlimited funds for emergency defence spending. National service fits neatly into this political settlement: another obligation imposed downward, justified upward, and moralised relentlessly. 

Polling helps illustrate this divide, but it does not explain it on its own. Recent YouGov research shows that 38 per cent of under-40s would refuse conscription in the event of a world war, and 30 per cent even if Britain itself faced imminent invasion. This is often presented as evidence of apathy or declining civic virtue. That reading is too easy – and wrong. 

Young people are not disengaged from the world. If anything, they are more exposed to it. They live with permanent crises: economic instability, climate breakdown, pandemic disruption, and now the normalisation of war as background noise. What they lack is not awareness, but trust. Trust in institutions that have consistently failed to deliver security, stability, or meaningful political voice. 

This is where the national service debate becomes revealing. Rather than asking why faith in politics has collapsed, it assumes compulsion as the solution. Rather than rebuilding legitimacy, it demands loyalty. The problem, we are told, is a lack of discipline among the young – not the strategic failures that make war feel increasingly inevitable. 

John Swinney’s recent comments capture this tension. Speaking about global instability, he expressed anxiety that his teenage son might one day be sent to fight. The comment was human and sincere. But it also exposed the contradiction at the heart of the debate. Those who speak most openly about the risks of war are often those responsible for the political choices that make war more likely – through alliance commitments, defence postures, and the steady erosion of diplomatic restraint.

This is why the most honest observation in the national service discussion is also the simplest: the problem is not the kids; it’s the war. 

National service is being proposed as a response to instability without confronting its causes. Young people did not create the geopolitical conditions now described as unavoidable. They did not design the foreign policy consensus that treats militarisation as default and diplomacy as secondary. Yet they are increasingly told that their role is to adapt, train, and serve – as though war were a natural disaster rather than a political outcome. 

“The problem is not the kids; it’s the war. ”

Supporters of national service often point to public concern about security threats. Surveys show rising anxiety about cyber-attacks, nuclear risk, and conflict in Europe, alongside increased support for defence spending. But concern does not equal consent. Willingness to invest in security is not the same as agreement to compulsory service – especially when that service falls disproportionately on those already carrying the heaviest economic burden.

There is also a quiet contradiction at the centre of the argument. Young people are frequently described as disengaged, yet research shows many are open to contributing to defence and resilience efforts, particularly in civilian or technical roles. The problem is not a lack of willingness, but a failure of institutions to offer meaningful, voluntary pathways that align with how younger generations understand work, risk, and responsibility. Coercion becomes attractive only when persuasion has failed.

Gender further exposes the fragility of the case. While a majority of the public supports conscripting women, women of conscription age are the least supportive of the idea. This is not ideological inconsistency; it reflects lived reality. Young women already face disproportionate insecurity, unpaid care burdens, and economic precarity. The suggestion that equality now requires equal exposure to state violence rings hollow when equality elsewhere remains elusive. 

What national service advocates rarely acknowledge is that young people are already performing forms of unpaid or underpaid service every day. Through insecure work, through prolonged dependence on family due to housing costs, and through absorbing the social and psychological costs of repeated crises. To insist that this generation now owes an additional year of compulsory service – while remaining locked out of stability – is not a call to unity. It is a demand for compliance. 

The deeper irony is that national service is framed as a solution to social fragmentation, when it is itself a symptom of it. A society confident in its future does not need to compel loyalty. A political system that commands trust does not need to mandate sacrifice. 

If the goal is resilience, there are better places to start. Secure housing. Decent work. Political inclusion. A foreign policy that treats war as failure rather than destiny. Until those foundations exist, national service will continue to be read – correctly – as another attempt to manage decline by passing its costs to the young. 

Young people are not refusing responsibility. They are refusing a settlement in which responsibility flows only one way. 

That is not a generational problem. It is a political one.