There an election this year.....

[JAS84]

Not even been a week and the Tory campaign has gone horribly. National service? Are they trying not to get votes or something?

Young people won't vote for them because they won't want to do it. And that's the crowd they need to vote for them.

[WillPS]

Not even been a week and the Tory campaign has gone horribly. National service? Are they trying not to get votes or something?

Young people won't vote for them because they won't want to do it. And that's the crowd they need to vote for them.

The all powerful under-18 vote? Stuff sure is different in Hull.

[cwathen]

Not even been a week and the Tory campaign has gone horribly. National service? Are they trying not to get votes or something?

What I find slightly hilarious about the musings of the 'bring back national service - share if you agree!' mob is how unlikely it is that any of them either actually did it or could even tell you anything about it (and that this proposal probably won't mean military service for the majority anyway). What most people think of (almost all young men doing 2 years in the armed forces without a world war going on) was only really a thing for 8 years or so. There's only really one generation of men that almost universally did it, and the youngest you can currently be to have done it is 84. If you're appealing to voters who think it's a good idea based on actual experience of it, that's a pretty small intersection.

National Service was unlikely ever to have truly been about 'National Service' anyway - it was probably far more likely about not wanting to be caught on the hop following the start of the cold war in case a further regional war escalated in short order into a major conflict then a world war (not an entirely unreasonable thing to plan for given that this had already happened twice in the living memory of most of the population at the time) but calling the planning for it something touchy feely like 'National Service' made this sound far less distressing. Then mutually assured destruction took over, it ceased to have much of any effective defense purpose and was swiftly abandoned.

But now in 2024 it's apparently a major policy platform in an election campaign? It sounds like the musings of a small party who know they can say whatever they want because they'll never get in, not something from one of the main two parties. On that basis, I'd say Sunak knows they're out.

[JAS84]

Not even been a week and the Tory campaign has gone horribly. National service? Are they trying not to get votes or something?

Young people won't vote for them because they won't want to do it. And that's the crowd they need to vote for them.

The all powerful under-18 vote? Stuff sure is different in Hull.

18-21 was what I had in mind there.

[WillPS]

Young people won't vote for them because they won't want to do it. And that's the crowd they need to vote for them.

The all powerful under-18 vote? Stuff sure is different in Hull.

18-21 was what I had in mind there.

...but they wouldn't have to do it, surely?

I'm not a fan of this policy, for clarity, but your argument doesn't really make sense.

[Martin Phillp]

I remember Labour had a similar scheme called the New Deal where young adults had to do 6 months of voluntary work among other things to receive their benefits.

[Charlie Wells]

The summary of the election debate...
- Rishi: "It'll be a disaster if Labour run the country, you don't want to risk it."
- Keir: "You've had 14 years and Liz Truss was the last PM before you."
- Both: "I can talk over you and won't stop when I'm asked to."

[Jonwo]

I honestly dislike the debate formats but the ITV one needed massive improvement like no interruptions.

[gottago]

D Day has got to be Sunak's "bigoted woman" moment right? An absolutely extraordinary own goal of monumental proportions. That image of Cameron with three actual current world leaders is quite something. There's four more weeks but surely, surely it can't get worse than this?!

Labour were polling three points behind him in his Richmond seat, which just happens to have the biggest military base in the UK.

[Jonwo]

D Day has got to be Sunak's "bigoted woman" moment right? An absolutely extraordinary own goal of monumental proportions. That image of Cameron with three actual current world leaders is quite something. There's four more weeks but surely, surely it can't get worse than this?!

Labour were polling three points behind him in his Richmond seat, which just happens to have the biggest military base in the UK.

Sunak's off to California, he don't care!

[Charlie Wells]

D Day has got to be Sunak's "bigoted woman" moment right? An absolutely extraordinary own goal of monumental proportions. That image of Cameron with three actual current world leaders is quite something. There's four more weeks but surely, surely it can't get worse than this?!

I dare say he's probably glad he's not personally taking part in the parties debate tonight, and that the next leaders head-to-head isn't for a few more weeks. I'm guessing this morning's apology was about damage limitation, and means that at least Penny Mordaunt can say that "the prime minister has apologised".

I think it's fair to say that a week is a long time in politics. Last week the focus was still on the Labour party over the Dianne Abbott saga. Since then you've had Farage announcing he's done a u-turn and will stand for Reform party, and now this 'poor judgement' by Rishi for the Conservatives.

I imagine the Conservatives are hoping that in the next week or two something will happen involving one of the other parties, so that people forget or at least stop focusing on this incident. Can guarantee the other parties will be doing their best to ensure that voters don't forget though, particularly Farage and the Reform party, who would probably claim he'd have 'patriotically stayed there all day'.