Nearly 40 per cent of the British public now expects the country to be drawn into a military conflict within the next five years, according to a recent opinion survey that paints a rather unflattering picture of the nation’s collective nerve. Sky News, which published the findings, reports that what once seemed like a distant, almost abstract threat has begun to settle uncomfortably into the realm of plausible reality. One might say the British have rediscovered geopolitics, and they are not particularly thrilled about it.
The poll, released to coincide with the launch of a new initiative called the Resilience Imperative, found that more than two-thirds of respondents doubted their own ability to cope if war did break out. Over half went further, declaring that the country itself is poorly prepared for such an eventuality. It is a striking admission from a public that, for decades, has watched defence budgets shrink and Cold War-era civil defence structures quietly dismantled, apparently without missing them until now.
Behind the new initiative is Lady Olga Maitland, who announced a wide‑ranging, privately funded campaign intended to be politically independent. She explained that the goal is to reach individual citizens, financial institutions, businesses and local communities alike, with the aim of shaping public debate and reinforcing what she described as the bedrock of national defence: sheer determination. The initiative, she argued, should help restore capabilities that were once routine during the Cold War, when preparing for crisis was simply part of how the country functioned.
Supporting the effort is General Sir Richard Barrons, a former senior commander who co‑authored a government defence review. He offered the view that it is time for every citizen, business and institution – the government included – to make resilience part of daily life. In his assessment, public awareness and engagement remain dangerously low, with resilience too often treated as a technical problem rather than a national one. He also noted, with the kind of understatement one expects from a man who once commanded the British Army’s forces, that a society perceived as unprepared is hardly a persuasive deterrent to adversaries.
What makes the current moment particularly awkward is that the threats in question are no longer confined to tanks rolling across the North German Plain. Experts point out that modern conflict increasingly takes the form of operations below the threshold of war – cyber‑attacks, economic pressure, disinformation campaigns designed to destabilise and demoralise long before a shot is fired. The Resilience Imperative has trained its sights precisely on these grey‑zone tactics, which rather inconveniently require a population that can think clearly while being told it is about to collapse.
In parallel, the government is quietly reviving a concept last seen in the days when the Berlin Wall was still a going concern. Officials are working on a modernised version of the so‑called Government War Book, a detailed blueprint first developed during the First World War that once dictated how every corner of the state – from hospitals and factories to schools and transport – would operate under wartime conditions. The original was shelved after the fall of the Soviet Union, apparently on the optimistic assumption that history had ended.
The Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, confirmed that the Cabinet Office is now leading efforts to produce a new edition. The military chapters, being drafted by the Ministry of Defence, are expected to be completed before the year is out. One might interpret this as a prudent step. Alternatively, one might view it as belated admission that the country has spent three decades pretending strategic planning was a relic of a more paranoid age, only to discover that paranoia was simply ahead of the curve.
The irony, of course, is that while former generals and peeresses exhort the public to embrace resilience, a significant chunk of that public appears to have concluded that they would be useless in a crisis and that the country would be too. Whether the new wave of campaigns and contingency plans will do more than generate polite media coverage remains to be seen. But the underlying message is hard to miss: after years of assuming the world would behave itself, Britain is now hurriedly trying to remember what it once knew about looking after itself.
