Young won’t fight for Britain if country only offers unemployment, says Badenoch

Young people will not fight for Britain if all it can offer them is unemployment, Kemi Badenoch has said.

The Conservative leader told the Press Association her party wanted to make young people “believe in their country” as she set out plans to invest in making the UK ready for war.

Her comments come after the head of the UK’s armed forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, warned “sons and daughters” would have to be ready to fight “if necessary” to deter Russian aggression.

And this year has seen European nations including France, Germany and Belgium reintroduce forms of national service in the face of an increasingly threatening world.

Speaking to PA on Thursday, Mrs Badenoch ruled out returning to the mandatory national service policy proposed by her predecessor Rishi Sunak at last year’s election, arguing young people would volunteer if their country offered them hope.

She said: “What we’re looking at is making sure that young people actually believe in their country.

“They feel that there’s no hope. A lot of young people are actually leaving.

“Putting on compulsory national service at a time when we’re not creating employment for young people, I think is the wrong way around.”

Adding that her party wanted to show young people that they could get jobs, start a family and buy a home, she said: “Show them that there is hope, then they’ll want to fight for their country.

“But if we’re not giving them anything except youth unemployment, why should they believe in us?”

Mrs Badenoch made her comments on a visit to Farnham-based drone manufacturer Evolve Dynamics as she unveiled her plan to divert green spending into a new defence fund.

The Tory plan would see the National Wealth Fund converted into a National Defence and Resilience Bank, with £11 billion currently earmarked for net zero projects funnelled into the UK’s defence industry.

Along with £6 billion from the research and development budget and £33 billion of private investment, the party said it expected the defence fund to total £50 billion.

The money would be invested in UK defence firms and building more secure supply chains, with Mrs Badenoch stressing the need to become less reliant on China.

She said: “We need sovereign capability. We need resilience. We can’t rely on China to look after our defence.”

Labour, which has vowed to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from 2027, said the Tories were “gaslighting the British public on defence”.

A Labour spokesperson said: “These are yet more fantasy figures from a Conservative Party that cut defence by £12 billion in their first five years in power.

“Look at their record: their time in office starved our forces of funding, drove down morale and left Britain less safe. They did it before, and they’d do it again.”