48% of Britain's would refuse to fight for their country

[cakeorwine]

So a new headline today

Daily Telegraph
Half of Britons would refuse to fight for their country

Half of Britons say there are no circumstances in which they would go to war for their country, a poll has found.

While the pollster Ipsos found strong backing for increased defence spending, some 48 per cent said there was no situation in which they would take up arms.

One in two Britons would never fight for their country | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

It was not that easy to find the data set but I've linked it below and shown the data from the question

Original data here

Despite rising support for increasing defence spending, half of Britons say there are no circumstances under which they would take up arms for Britain | Ipsos

War-trends-final-weighted

Would be interested to hear your opinion on the survey results

As would Sir Humphrey

It is weighted for gender, age, region, employment status, social grade, education level, income, ethnicity, 2024 election vote and Brexit.

Which is what is generally meant by weighted to match population.

The clue was in the link that included the word weighted.

That would surely depend on the situation.

The has a U.S. military conscription lottery for the Vietnam War war and Donald Trump avoided military service during the Vietnam War through a combination of educational and medical deferments.

1940 UK - when Europe occupied terratory and u boats are bombing shipping across the atlantic - harder to avoid.

I haven’t read the question yet. I will do after I post. But I’ll lose my post and I can’t be bothered writing it again.

i’m a veteran. I will definitely fight for my country. I come from a long line of service men and women. Across all the services.

Why doesn't the government build a register of those who would SERVE their country in time of war and those who wouldn't? By serve, I don't mean fight, I mean be available to do necessary work in time of war. I am too old to fight, I would just be in the way, but I would be prepared to other things.

@JuliaAgrippina

That’s what I was getting at. If we end up in a situation where shit has really hit the fan, people will not be given the option and the ways in which they could participate have evolved quite significantly beyond it being only front line fighting, which further widens the potential pool.

We will need an auxiliary police force to enforce law and order. Stop looters and shoplifters.

Doh! Am not firing on all cylinders this morning.

I think that’s because the current idea of war is Donald Trump being a dickhead in the Middle East. It would be very different if there were physical armies marching towards us. (Or I’d like to think it would be!)

Nothing to stop you joining the Special Constabulary.

I wouldn't sign up before I was conscripted, and I wouldn't want anyone I know to either.

Not much of one, realistically.

It's all available in the OP

Many people are proving the point of this post

Others would simply move to any other country and claim refugee status - could literally be anywhere but probably a good idea to go to whichever country that pays you the most benefits.

I don't think Russian has capacity to take Europe like Germany managed - they've taken 4 years to get 20% of Urkaine and driven their economy to the ground to do that. Also increasingly seeing suggestions China may be coverting Russian land that was once theirs - so they could be facing more issues than Europe.

No other countries near us are threatening us with invasion and I agree that will be massively influencing answers in any survey.

I'm not sure there is much appetite to get involved in yet another US war in middle east.

I do see govenments under pressure to spend more on defence - though think US pressure was meant to make us spend more with them and now Europe looking at spending it within it's own borders.

Just saying

I note there is no breakdown in the response by age. The respondents were 18-75. For many people responding "fighting" for Britain wouldn't be something they were ever asked to do. I'd do a survey on possible conscription age people only.

Also if you asked "If Britain were at war, would you contribute in some way to the war effort?" and gave a variety of options you'd probably get a more positive response.

Data available in the OP

It's literally one click

If conscription or national service only applies to men then surely a large number of men will be thinking why should I fight and potentially get killed when women don't have to and that with equality of opportunity should come equality of responsibility.

Can you summarise it? I can't even read the table on my screen with my glasses on, it's in tiny font.

If you want to make a point, make it IN THE THREAD, don't refer people to massive, tiny tables of data, it's simply tl:dr and ts:dr in my case.

I thought we all realised Polls are just think-tank figures for one side or another? So many bots and AI their collection methods are often useless. See also how our economy keeps rising despite all the nay-saying economist shout because they are targeted by hackers.
Don't read anything into them, actions count louder.

Nope. That's what nuclear weapons are for. If someone tried to invade then nuke the bastards! Of course, they will retaliate and will all die. But at least we wouldn't be invaded!

But people will have an opinion- they can simply leave the country as many Ukrainian
men have done.

I had to do it

I've cliked through the links you've posted but I'm not sure what you actually want posters to focus on.

I'm not shocked people do not read links - or if they do they do not do indepth anlaysis or with same focus as those who post them- nor am I shocked survey are structured to increase likelyhood of deriable answers - that come up in books and TV shows for years hardly an new insight.

Can people think of a question that might produce a different response?

It's all about the question- and potentially the lead up questions