Now that they have added a bit more detail showing that it’s not just Lads Army with only 30,000 military spaces per year mostly I’m the Cyber fields what are peoples thoughts on the idea?
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Sounds good to me, but the oversimplified headlines don’t seem to be landing well with millennials and gen. Z voters.
So yesterday they were calling it mandatory military service. With a volunteer option. Today it’s 30k placements for “the brightest and the best”, where everyone else only needs to do 25 days. And there’s no punishment if you don’t, so it’s not mandatory at all…
It seems like a bit of a gimmick of an idea to try and gain some votes that’s not actually had much thought applied to it.
It’s not national service as we’ve seen in other countries, nor how it used to be here.
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I think calling it National Service was a bad strategy, it conjures up Battledress and Brylcream.
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Yeah, it was a poor choice. If they’d led with ‘Young Adult Engagement’ or something like that, it might have been a bit better, as getting 18 year olds engaged with the outside world seems to be the real aim here.
And that’s something I’m not really agaisnt. The general preemies is something I think most people could get behind.
My real issues here are that:
a) This is a purely political statement in a pre-elextion period, so potentially means nothing at all.
b) They seem to be wanting a mandatory thing, which I don’t agree with.
c) It appears this is just an idea, rather than a plan, but it’s being presented as though this is a fully thought out plan. See point a…
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Didn’t they make the same mistake with NCS?
It’s far more complex than the sound bites can convey. Read Sir Humphrey’s article to get a better idea of what might be envisaged.
exmpa
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They’re chasing the grey and middle aged, right-leaning votes with how it’s sold.
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The whole thing is idiotic.
They say that young people aren’t engaged with society anymore, well, duh. They’ve spent 14 years ripping apart youth services, creating an economy they can’t afford to live in, removed any chance for them to move freely around Europe, and now their answer to young people not feeling enthusiastic about the country they live in?
Force them to do it.
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Rishi is just desperately trying to maintain the old and grey voters to at least have an enough seats to require two hands to count.
Poorly thought out plan without any actual intention to put into action.
Nothing annoys me more than being “forced” to do something. If I were still 18 and this came into force, I’d be protesting on the streets.
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Yeah, but you can’t do that anymore either.
At least anyone who doesn’t do it can take solace in the fact we don’t have room in the prisons to punish them for it.
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Fortunately the latest report and recommendation by (numpty apparently with ties to oil companies) looks to have come too late to have seen any potential implementation.
Greater police powers and (weirdly) exclusion zones around oil companies and some other industry he’s also apparently linked to that I’ve forgotten.
The gall to title it “protecting our democracy from coercion” or whatever it was is either diabolical or oblivious.
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Anyway… National Service.
If they don’t stay in then it shouldn’t matter, so…
I think this is more aimed at the old Red Wall seats, the northern working class that may well vote Reform.
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I expect this to be the first of many overtly nationalist but ultimately unworkable ideas we hear from the parties as this campaign progresses.
Over the past few years we’ve seen that there is a strong element of people who buy into nationalistic jingoism, and that they can hold sway over the direction of elections and of parties themselves. I feel that this is an attempt to pander to that segment of society.
Frankly, the Conservatives have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by throwing random, populist nationalist ideas out there at this stage and seeing what sticks. It’s not as if their popularity can get that much worse than it already is and, if one of the ideas sticks, it might mitigate their upcoming losses.
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When Rishi says “competitive full-time military commission over 12 months”, does that mean this is just for officer types — like the gap year commissions people like Rory Stewart did?
A big if hypothetically the conservatives….
- Stay in power and
- actually follow this out.
It would be interesting if “community volunteering” could be covered through the cadet forces. Although this wasn’t on their initial list of partners using MOD sponsored organisations to provide the training (ultimately staff cadets) too or simply if you are in the cadet forces get your card signed off by your OC etc with attendance or X number of camps or DofE or something similar would be a good way to retain cadets. Otherwise If this did become policy I do genuinely think we would lose a big proportion of 18+.
Unless you are born early in the school year, turning 18 would mean that you would be doing “national service” whilst revising for your A-Levels and potentially during your first months of uni too if you followed that route. Which although Squadron nights might not be too much of an issue camps and weekend events could be wiped out.
Sounds like a waste of everyone’s time for it to be a year. By the time you’ve done basic, you won’t have much time left.
If you get a bad enough injury in your first week, you might end up missing the whole year!
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There’s a venn diagram with a large central section there.