The Spectator asks where Britain's fighting spirit went. Try the housing market.

Spectator Australia · Mary Wakefield · Monday 20 April 2026

The Spectator asks where Britain's fighting spirit went. Try the housing market.

The Spectator laments the collapse of British martial enthusiasm among young men — as if the answer isn't written across every boarded-up high street from Hartlepool to Hull.

The Spectator's rediscovered that empires in decline stop producing soldiers. Gibbon wrote six volumes on this in 1776. Wakefield's filed eight hundred words and called it a question. The fighting spirit went where the industrial base went, where the housing went, where the pension went — mate, you can't ask men to die for a country that won't let them rent in it.

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