The Telegraph: Benefits Britain is in no fit state to fight a war against Russia

Our only hope is that the Kremlin decide not to waste their time as Labour’s welfare obsession is destroying the country for them, The Telegraph notes.

“War may be coming,” trembled the headline on the BBC News website this week. “Are we psychologically ready?”

The ensuing article, which was all about the supposedly growing risk that we’ll have to fight Vladimir Putin, turned out to be more than 2,000 words long – which, in my view, was somewhat excessive, because it could easily have been just one word: “No.”

Still, if BBC bosses requested a touch more detail, I suppose it could have been stretched out a little. Perhaps to something like: “Seriously? Are you joking? Of course we’re not ‘ready’ for war with Russia. Right now we could barely handle war with Easter Island. And that’s not just because of our ‘psychology’. We’re not ‘ready’ in any sense at all.”

For one thing: imagine trying to impose conscription nowadays. Millions could just whip out a note from their GP, explaining that they can’t fight because world wars make them anxious. And what could our Labour Government say in response to that? “Look, I know we’ve previously agreed that your anxiety means you’re incapable of coping with a job counting paperclips for two hours a week. But we think you’re definitely capable of marching on Moscow.”

In which case, who could the Government call up? Perhaps it could beg the large numbers of working-class men who have spent the past two years being demonised as “far-Right” for the crime of flying this country’s flag. Good luck with that. “Hello, gentlemen. You know how we repeatedly told you that your displays of British patriotism are divisive, hateful and almost certainly racist? Well, we’ve been having a bit of a think, and we’ve realised that there is one scenario in which men who love their country can actually be quite useful…”

Or perhaps the Government could try begging the generation of young men who have spent practically their entire lives being told that they’re toxic misogynistic incels who will never get a girlfriend, because they’ve been “radicalised” by “the manosphere”. I’m sure they’d be only too delighted to lay down their lives for an elite that has relentlessly scorned and belittled them.

In short, then: conscription would be a wash-out. We’d end up with an army that would make the Home Guard of Walmington-on-Sea look like the Galactic Empire from Star Wars.

Of course, we can always rely on our brave Armed Forces, but they’d probably stand a better chance if our Government were willing to fund them properly. The trouble is, there isn’t an awful lot of money around – in large part because the Government insists on spending it on benefits, instead.

This week, we learnt that one in five working-age adults is on Universal Credit. And if that isn’t alarming enough, consider the following figures. In the 2025-26 financial year, we spent £62bn on defence. Meanwhile, over the same period, we spent £145bn on working-age welfare.

But if you’re thinking that it might just possibly be time to cut the latter to spend more on the former, forget it. As Andy Burnham told the Commons this month: “National security cannot come at the expense of social security.”

So what’s to be done? Well, ideally, try not to stumble into a war that we’re clearly in no fit state to fight.

In the meantime, I fear that we have only one hope. Which is that Putin will decide not to waste his time declaring war on Britain, because our Government is doing a perfectly good job of destroying the country on its own.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs