While the UK government has spent the last year heralding a ‘national conversation’ on defence and security, it seems to have little interest in hearing from the British public on how it views its own security. Thomas Martin shares some of the findings of his own research of public opinion, suggesting that there are significant divisions among voters about threats and responses.
The UK Government’s 2025 defence and national security strategies concentrate on the Russia threat, and calls for the public to back a costly drive to modernise and strengthen the British military. Yet the findings of my recent research demonstrate that public perspectives on national security are diverse and contested. Drawing on a nationally representative public opinion survey, a new report shows that there is limited public consensus on national security. What emerges are a range of perspectives on which threats are the most salient and what policy responses should be prioritised, with divisions emerging along party political lines. This article aims to explore the implications of the public’s complex and polarised ideas about security.
The call for public unity
From geopolitical instability and war in Europe, to the transnational challenges of climate change, and the everyday economic insecurities experienced by many, the UK’s security environment appears more complex than ever. To respond successfully, both the Strategic Defence Review 2025 and the National Security Strategy 2025 argue that the British public need to benefit from and support the government’s approach. Sir Keir Starmer’s introduction to the NSS stresses that ‘foreign policy should answer directly to the concerns of the working people’ and demands ‘nothing less than national unity’ in facing the challenges ahead. The SDR emphasises a ‘whole-of-society’ approach, and argues that ‘a national conversation on how we do it is required’.
What this ‘national conversation’ should look like is currently unclear, and government seems to envisage a process in which the public is persuaded to support the direction it has chosen. This research highlights a challenging reality: given the nuance and diversity of perspectives about security among UK citizens, generating public buy-in to the direction of UK security policy will require significant engagement – and openness to two-way exchange – to yield results.
Diverse perspectives on national security
Opinion polls on national security often ask the public to identify their most pressing ‘threat’ from among a limited menu of national security priorities (i.e. Russian aggression, cyberattacks, terrorism). Rather than recycling the standard list of establishment security preoccupations, this research took a different approach. It started by asking people around the country what their perspectives were on nation security: What made them feel safe or unsafe? What threats were they worried about? And what steps would they take to make people in the UK more secure? The responses from these focus group questions helped shape a more open set of opinion survey questions, which were then posed to a nationally representative sample of 2072 respondents. The research process uncovered a complex picture, evidencing a public that was not solely preoccupied with traditional, military threats – as well as marked divergences between the views of supporters of the major political parties on national security.
Figure 1: Principal threats to the security of the UK
The above chart shows public views on the most important security threats. While traditional security threats such as ‘terrorism’, ‘cyberattacks’, and ‘hostile states’ do resonate with the public, they sit alongside non-traditional threats, such as ‘migration to the UK’ and ‘climate change’, as well as ‘human security’ concerns, such as ‘economic insecurity’ and ‘street crime’.
The survey also asked what policies respondents would prioritise to produce security in the UK.
Figure 2: Possible actions that the UK government could do to make people more secure.
Again, while orthodox security issues are not absent – such as maintaining a nuclear deterrent and increasing defence spending – they are overshadowed by concerns over immigration, the ‘cost of living’ crisis, and a need to improve public services in the UK.
Taken together, this highlights that, for many people in the UK, ‘human security’ concerns – like economic stability, decent public services and community safety – are just as important as more orthodox national security concerns, if not more so.
This has important implications for debates about defence spending. While a majority of respondents supported increasing defence spending, there was no agreement on any of the available options for covering the costs:
Figure 3: Options for funding increases in defence spending.
Overall, these findings suggest that greater consultation and consensus-building may be needed to broaden public consensus behind a security policy agenda that better reflects public concerns. In particular, the public may have misgivings about backing the ‘tough choice’ to significantly increase defence spending as set out in NSS2025; and any failure to keep a wider range of human security and ecological priorities clearly in view could meet with significant public opposition.
Trust in institutions, policies and partners
The challenge for government of building a broad consensus on national security can also be seen in the lack of trust expressed by many respondents in the core institutions, policies and actors that affect people’s sense of security. Most respondents felt policing in the UK, and UK foreign and economic policies make them feel less secure. Underlining challenges in the information environment, the media, social media and high net worth individuals (e.g. billionaires) made significant numbers feel less secure. President Donald Trump, and the UK’s relationships with both the US and the EU, were all seen as making respondents feel less secure. Significant numbers of people feel less secure as a result of the UK possessing nuclear weapons.
Figure 4: Things affecting people’s sense of security in the UK.
These results underline that large cross sections of the public do not trust key British policies, institutions or allies to make them safer. Indeed, the survey found:
- 40% saw the actions of the UK government as a source of insecurity;
- 28% saw the actions of the UK government as both a source of security and insecurity;
- 23% of respondents saw the actions of the UK government as a source of security.
These responses also differed significantly based on voting intention: 58% of respondents who said they intend to vote for Reform UK saw the government’s actions as a source of insecurity, as opposed to only 20% of those who intend to vote for Labour.
The party politics of national security
Indeed, it was this party politics of national security that emerged as one of the more striking themes within the research. As concerns grow over disinformation, post-truth politics, and polarisation of people situated in different political and knowledge communities, this research offers a striking insight into the divergent security perceptions and opinions of those with different voting intentions. For instance, while overall, survey respondents affirmed migration as the most salient threat and security priority, this was a reflection of the significance migration has for those intending to vote Conservative and Reform. Conversely, it was neither a top three security threat nor a top three security priority for those intending to vote Labour or Green, who instead identified economic insecurity and climate change as overarching concerns.
Here are the profiles of those intending to vote for the five leading parties:
Conservative
- Feel more secure than average, especially in their immediate surroundings.
- Broadly trust the institutions of the UK to make them secure.
- Identify tackling migration as their core priority.
Green
- Are less concerned about ‘traditional’ security threats, such as terrorism, instead prioritising socio-economic insecurities and climate change.
- Are opposed to increased defence spending.
- Do not trust the institutions of the UK to produce security.
- Tend to see the Government as a source of insecurity.
- Feel more secure than average, especially concerning the national and global context.
- Trust the institutions of the UK to make them secure, and show the most trust in the UK Government.
- Identify socio-economic and climate security as their priorities.
- Are most willing to fund a higher defence budget, but only through higher taxation or increased borrowing.
Liberal Democrat
- Feel more confident that the UK is a secure place to live than average.
- Identify cyberattacks and economic insecurity as core concerns.
- Are more likely to focus on global dynamics, and see the UN, NATO and the UK’s relationship to the EU very positively.
- Are particularly critical of Donald Trump, and the UK’s relationship with America.
- Want to increase cooperation with the EU.
Reform UK
- Feel less secure in the UK.
- Overwhelmingly identify migration as their core priority.
- Are less concerned about global affairs and climate change.
Are focused primarily on the security of the UK, understood in terms of defence expenditure, nuclear capabilities, and self-reliance.
In sum, what emerges is a distinct party politics, concerning both how people experience security in the UK, and their primary concerns and policy priorities. Navigating through these competing priorities will not be simple. Divergent priorities cannot always be accommodated, and tough choices may have to be made. Policies that produce security for some, are seen as generating insecurity by others. Take the UK’s relationship with the United States: at the time of the survey (before the 2026 Iran war) this was seen as a source of security for those intending to vote Conservative or Reform UK, but as a source of insecurity for those intending to vote Liberal Democrat or Green. Overcoming party political and inter-generation divergences of view will require debating security, and the full range of responses and trade-offs available, more routinely with the public, and challenging misleading narratives where warranted.
Rethinking the public debate
What, then, does this mean for the politics of national security in the UK? Whitehall tends to assert the establishment’s view of national security as the only sensible and strategic approach, and anticipates cross-party consensus and public acquiescence in response. However, as I have argued with Nick Ritchie and Elisabeth Schweiger, maintaining consensus on national security takes significant work. Right now the public lacks a shared view on the most salient threats and what to do in response, and is deeply sceptical about several UK security institutions, policies and allies.
Unity is therefore a long way off – and people with different political views see national security problems and solutions in very different ways. This makes Whitehall’s need to adapt in the face of rapidly fluctuating security dynamics – and keep the public on board when doing so –challenging. If the UK is going to achieve cross-societal solidarity in a more difficult and dangerous world – and convince the public to pay for coherent long-term responses to wide-ranging security challenges – it is going to need a much more expansive, democratic conversation about what security is for, who it is for, and how it should be achieved.
Attempts to build public consensus around defence spending or security strategy cannot rely on simplistic narratives or headline polling figures. Political and media narratives, as they currently stand, fail to capture the full diversity of public opinion and the varied ways in which people experience and think about security. And people’s perspectives on national security have become inseparable from their politics. National security is experienced and perceived differently within the UK – with those in different political communities believing very different things.
If the British public is expected to play a more active role in national security, then it will be important to recognise and factor in their diverse experiences, priorities, and concerns. Further debate will clearly be needed before specific priorities can be placed before others; exchanges of views, evidence and analysis may be required to overcome very significant differences of opinion – and the challenges of disinformation – on key topics, such as migration, before the right policy approach can be formulated and achieve a sustainable base of public consensus. Greater effort to identify why the public expresses so little trust in the UK’s key security institutions, policies and allies, to address any underlying challenges and explore ways to restore public confidence, would likewise appear essential.
These public perspectives cannot be treated as a problem to be managed from the top down – and need to be much more consistently engaged with as a basis for any sustainable and legitimate security policy to succeed in uncertain times.
Dr Thomas Martin is Senior Lecturer in International Studies at the Open University. His research interests lie in the security politics of the Global North, and he has published widely on the UK’s national security politics.
The full version and executive summary of his research were published by the Open University Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice in May 2026.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: ‘Peace and Life’ kinetic artwork by Yaacov Agam at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France.
