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UK’s Sunak promises mandatory national service for 18-year-olds if elected [26 May 2024 | Al Jazeera] (www.aljazeera.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15826549

Ruling Conservative Party says it will bring back national service if it wins the July 4 general election.

Eighteen-year-olds will have to perform a mandatory national service if the Conservative Party is voted back to power in the United Kingdom’s July 4 election, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced.

The prime minister’s plan would entail young people being given a choice between a full-time placement in the armed forces for 12 months or spending one weekend a month for a year volunteering in their community, the party said.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

If you’re not doing great, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and weather the storm and work to make things sunnier before the next election rather than call for an election amidst the storm?

The latest possible date the election could have been is January 2025, but that was practically very unlikely as i) there is an extremely sharp generational divide in voting intentions (far sharper than in most Western democracies) and January would have meant the Tories having to get their elderly core voters to the polls in the middle of winter, and ii) a January vote would have meant a campaign running over Christmas, and everyone would have punished Sunak for that. The widespread expectation was for an autumn election.

It's unclear why Sunak jumped earlier but likely a combination of various factors:

them being worried the economy will not get better by the autumn (so avoids going to the polls after a summer of bad economic news);
going early means their main opponents on the right (Reform) don't have time to get their act together and select candidates in all seats (which they would have done by the autumn);
their flagship immigration policy is controversial and expensive, yet likely to have an underwhelming impact on illegal immigration levels, and they'll look like complete idiots for centring an autumn election on a 'stop the boats' slogan if there's another summer of small boat arrivals in the meantime; and
Sunak personally is fed up - he's very much a political child of the far-right (an avowed Brexiter long before Boris Johnson or Liz Truss converted to the cause) yet the far-right of the Tory Party don't see him as one of their own and have been constant thorns in his side throughout his leadership - he may just want out at this stage.