Video gamers to pilot drones in war zones? Might not be such a bad idea - David Behrens

The hard-core players at whom these things are marketed are often stereotyped as basement-dwellers with a fondness for cheap beer and herbal stimulants but that’s unfair; many are intelligent, liberal-minded young people who just like to escape from reality by harmlessly blowing stuff up and crashing virtual Ferraris across their 65-inch screens.

All the same, they don’t on the face of it seem like ideal candidates for the harsh realism of the armed forces – where the theatre of combat involves actual weapons that are seldom deployed whilst reclined.

Yet these are the people our Defence Secretary is now telling them to recruit. John Healey, who is also the MP for Rawmarsh in South Yorkshire, set out his stall at the Labour conference by suggesting the skills involved in sending drones by remote control into actual war zones were not very different to those required for a game of Call of Duty.

And as Britain currently has a shortage of drone pilots, we should look for more from within the sedentary ranks of gamers, he said. He was therefore relaxing the entry requirements for the Army, Navy and RAF and promising to get new entrants off their rocking chairs and on to the parade ground in 30 days flat.

What the Army brass makes of this is unrecorded. A regiment of Grand Theft Auto jockeys with worn-out fingers may be even less welcome than the return of national service Rishi Sunak was threatening a few months ago. For while the skills may be similar, the discipline is self-evidently not.

Nevertheless, there is a serious point here. There have apparently been 90,000 attempted attacks in the last two years on Britain’s core defence computers and Russian hackers are suspected of being responsible. So why not fight them on their own terms: our armchair army against theirs.

Besides, the Defence Secretary was not the only person this week to discover that the things people get up to at home can sometimes be harnessed for the greater good. The Director of Public Prosecutions didn’t quite go so far as to advocate army discipline for wayward youngsters but he certainly thought a good old-fashioned rollocking was not out of place when the occasion demanded.

Stephen Parkinson, who has been doing Keir Starmer’s old job since last November, reported that one 14-year-old boy caught up in the post-Southport riots was so severely told off by his parents that prosecution in court was rendered unnecessary. In reading the riot act and marching the lad down to the local police station, his mum and dad had achieved more than the criminal justice system ever could.

It was in stark contrast to the behaviour of other families for whom taking part in the riots was akin to a leisure activity, Mr Parkinson said. And in that single sentence he encapsulated the two sides of British society today: those who respect the law and each other; and those with no respect for anyone or anything.

Here’s how the numbers stack up: for every person disciplined at home last month, 75 were taken to court. That’s obviously not the full picture: most respectable people did not riot at all.

But if parental discipline makes the difference, politicians are loath to acknowledge it. Voters don’t like to be lectured on their inadequacies. The Home Secretary went nowhere near the subject in her own conference speech on Tuesday, insisting that what the nation needed was a debate on immigration.

Fine – but we must also talk about the responsibility of parents to set their kids the right example. The two are bound together: the traditional working-class ethic of harbouring ambitions for your children has completely vanished from many communities today and the summer riots were the manifestation of ignorance passed down through the generations.

We can’t grow wiser unless we foster respect. And I doubt if that crossed John Healey’s mind when he unveiled his armchair army of outcasts – but he may actually have been on the money. Out with those barrack room bunks, boys – bring in the neon chairs.