In desperate times, desperate solutions. Rishi Sunak, who polls predict a historic electoral defeat on July 4, is trying by all means to awaken the conservative heart that a large part of the British people have. The first surprise announcement of this long campaign has been the commitment to recover mandatory military service for all 18-year-olds—women and men. Under the new Compulsory National Service (which the UK, like most European countries, abandoned in the mid-1960s), Britons who reach adulthood will have to work for 12 months for the Armed Forces, or one week a month for a year in community social services, which may also include medical emergencies.
The full-year option includes the possibility of training in military cybersecurity.
“To all those who complain and consider it unreasonable that national service is mandatory I say: citizenship carries as many obligations as rights. Being British is more than just sharing a specific queue when you go through passport control,” Sunak defended his party’s proposal in a newspaper column. Mail on Sunday.
The implementation of the new plan would mean close to 3,000 million euros annually, according to calculations by the British Government.
It is still early to determine whether the promise will take flight or will be a new clumsiness that the conservatives will try to bury in a hurry. For now, during the first hours after launching it publicly, Sunak and his team have had to dedicate their efforts to convincing the media and voters that no one will go to jail if they refuse to comply with this new milli.
“There will not be any type of criminal sanction. “No one will go to prison for this,” insisted the Minister of the Interior, James Cleverly, this Sunday in SkyNews. “Part of the effort responds to the need to be useful to the armed forces, but the real reason for the measure is to try to build a more cohesive society, where citizens mix with each other beyond their respective bubbles, whether through through military service or through uniformed or non-uniformed civilian service,” Cleverly was trying to explain.
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Behind the new proposal there is, above all, a political strategy, but also a certain national logic. The first has to do with trying to stop the nationalist and populist discourse of the Reform Party, the formation founded at the time by Nigel Farage, and which could currently steal votes and do a lot of damage to the electoral expectations of the tories. But, in addition, Sunak has placed the need to strengthen the United Kingdom’s military capacity at the center of his political message in recent months. His recent speeches depict an insecure world full of threats—Russia, China, tension in the Middle East…— to which he promises to respond, as shown by his commitment to increase defense spending to 2.5% of the budget.
The armed forces themselves have demanded greater commitment from society in the face of this panorama. The Chief of the British General Staff, General Patrick Sanders, suggested in January, during a speech in London, that the example of other countries, such as Sweden – with mandatory military service since 2017 – should be followed, and “take preparatory steps so that the society begins to adapt to a pre-war situation”, something that, according to him, would be “not only desirable, but essential”.
At that time, the Sunak Government categorically ruled out the possibility of recovering Compulsory National Service, which it has now decided to present as a big campaign surprise.
‘Mili’ versus vote
The Labor opposition has charged against a surprise proposal that it has described as “desperate”, without a true spending forecast, and which responds, according to them, to the deterioration suffered by the Army after 14 years of conservative governments. “They have emptied the Armed Forces until they are as reduced as in Napoleon’s time,” said a spokesperson for the left-wing party.
To attract or scare him, the young British electorate has become the center of the electoral debate in the first days of the campaign. Labor Party candidate Keir Starmer has promised that he will lower the legal voting age to 16. “If you can work or you can pay taxes, if you can join the Armed Forces, you should also be able to vote,” Starmer announced.
A recent YouGov poll shows that only 10% of young British people aged between 18 and 24 support compulsory National Service, compared to 46% support among those over 65, who are the core of the conservative electorate and those who go to the polls the most.
57% of these same young people, also according to the same polling company, intend to vote for the Labor Party.
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