Introduce Scandi-style conscription to save Britain’s youth
As a society, we lack demonstrable skills, self-discipline, and a sense of collective purpose. It is time we put that right
Alan Milburn’s interview this weekend with Laura Kuenssberg confirmed what many have long suggested: the welfare state is actively enabling a generation of young people to opt out of contributing anything at all to society.
The latest NEET figures themselves are damning, and the absence of any serious scrutiny over where public money is flowing has allowed the problem to fester. Nothing on the horizon suggests it is about to improve.
For months, I have been rabbeting on about the necessity to introduce some form of national service. It seems like a straightforward political win for any party that dares to look outside of their own castle.
But now, I am more convinced than ever that it represents the only serious intervention capable of rescuing Britain’s youth from a state-subsidised drift into irrelevance.
The Conservatives tried this in their 2024 election manifesto. It bombed with the public, was communicated badly by Downing Street, and was simultaneously picked apart by their own Defence Minister. The policy was not fundamentally wrong, but the execution was a disaster.
Denmark shows how it can be done properly, extending conscription to include women for the first time last year, with service lasting between three and twelve months. On their Day of Defence, every Danish citizen over 18 is required to attend seminars introducing them to the military and undergo a medical assessment to determine their suitability for service.
If you will pardon the pun, it is a NEET solution on two fronts: every 18-year-old gets a medical check-up, and the country begins to build something resembling cultural cohesion. And goodness knows we need that too.
The model also works because it is honest about what it is. It does not dress compulsion up as opportunity. It tells young people that ownership of a country is not inherited passively, but earned. Young Danes are not asked whether they feel like contributing. They are expected to.
Norway goes further. Its model rotates conscripts through military, civil defence, and public service roles depending on aptitude and national need. A young person with no aptitude for or interest in the armed forces can spend their service supporting emergency services, environmental monitoring, or social care. The country gets what it needs. The individual gets skills, structure, and the not-insignificant experience of being useful.
We could adopt exactly this: a compulsory Day of Assessment at 18 for every young person, modelled on the Danish template, combining medical screening, a skills audit, and an honest conversation about where each individual could contribute most. That would be followed by a minimum period of structured service, military or civilian, with financial or legal penalties for refusal, such as in Sweden or Finland.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has repeatedly flagged long-term inactivity as a structural fiscal risk. Complaints about the cost of a national service programme are inevitable, but they ignore the other side of the ledger. We are already paying, heavily, for a generation that contributes less and less. The question is not whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.
The politics, if handled properly, are more straightforward than they appear. It is not a question of left or right. In Scandinavia, both conservative and social democratic governments have broadened the scope of national service.
Britain today is broken for so many people, especially the young. As a society, we lack demonstrable skills, self-discipline, and a sense of collective purpose. It is time we put that right.