There seems to be more press coverage suggesting that conscription will be likely in the UK in the coming years. This was seemingly prompted by Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer’s intervention on 17 Jan 2024, which was followed by other comments, e.g., by Gen Sir Patrick Sanders on 23rd, a flutter of comment on Gen Z’s apparent reluctance to go to war, and a YouGov poll.
I was curious to discover what press coverage is doing to Google searches. Let’s have a look at Google Trends. First, zooming into the last seven days:
Searches began to pick up around 9pm on the 23rd, peaking 11pm on the 24th before fading out again:
| Date | Searches |
| 2024-01-23T20 | 1 |
| 2024-01-23T21 | 2 |
| 2024-01-23T22 | 4 |
| 2024-01-23T23 | 6 |
| 2024-01-24T00 | 8 |
| 2024-01-24T01 | 8 |
| 2024-01-24T02 | 14 |
| 2024-01-24T03 | 25 |
| 2024-01-24T04 | 22 |
| 2024-01-24T05 | 28 |
| 2024-01-24T06 | 37 |
| 2024-01-24T07 | 43 |
| 2024-01-24T08 | 38 |
| 2024-01-24T09 | 35 |
| 2024-01-24T10 | 38 |
| 2024-01-24T11 | 46 |
| 2024-01-24T12 | 61 |
| 2024-01-24T13 | 71 |
| 2024-01-24T14 | 70 |
| 2024-01-24T15 | 69 |
| 2024-01-24T16 | 64 |
| 2024-01-24T17 | 75 |
| 2024-01-24T18 | 85 |
| 2024-01-24T19 | 82 |
| 2024-01-24T20 | 78 |
| 2024-01-24T21 | 72 |
| 2024-01-24T22 | 92 |
| 2024-01-24T23 | 100 |
| 2024-01-25T00 | 86 |
| 2024-01-25T01 | 81 |
| 2024-01-25T02 | 78 |
| 2024-01-25T03 | 71 |
| 2024-01-25T04 | 58 |
| 2024-01-25T05 | 57 |
| 2024-01-25T06 | 67 |
| 2024-01-25T07 | 75 |
| 2024-01-25T08 | 65 |
| 2024-01-25T09 | 55 |
That’s a notably bigger increase than over the past year:
Zooming out, this year’s spike is more pronounced than one in Feb 2022, coinciding with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24th.
Here’s all the data:
(Corrected final two graphs on 4 Feb 2024 to take account of all data in Jan 2024.)
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2024, January 27). UK Google searches for “conscription” [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/uk-google-searches-for-conscription/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀