Election 2024 - The Shadow of the Past

 The election campaign has been galvanised by the Prime Minister's unexpected attempt to recapture the magic of the Tories golden years in the 1950s. No, not a sudden assault on Egypt to retake control of the Suez canal but, in the words of the Daily Telegraph

Rishi Sunak has vowed to bring back National Service for 18-year-olds to create a “renewed sense of pride in our country” in his first policy announcement of the election campaign...

This idea seems to have come from nowhere. It has not featured in Conservative manifestos of recent years, nor did Sunak wow the party conference last October by donning a beret and posing with beaming 18 year olds who just could not wait to get down to Caterham and start shovelling coke behind the mess hall. 

Naturally one might expect the top brass at the War Office to be delighted. And one would be wrong. The headline in The Independent the day after read

Ex-military chief says Rishi Sunak’s national service plan is ‘bonkers’

 Britain has changed. Huge numbers of young people aspire to university or college education when they leave school, not to put on uniform and march up and down barracks squares for the gratification of their sergeant-major. Even if the idea of doing something for one's country were to be popular, they wish to choose what they do, not to be conscripted by a faceless Whitehall bureacracy. Presumably Sunak is aiming this policy at older Tory voters who still nurture strange ideas about "discipline" and "respect"; the conscripts of the 1950s certainly learned how to smoke furtive cigarettes by cupping them in one hand behind their backs but this was the generation that produced the artistic flowering of the 60s, the satire boom and the biggest shift away from deference to authority ever seen in this country. 

Details of how the scheme would work are sketchy but it does not seem to involve compulsory service; volunteering either for military support duties or work in the community are being touted. According to Sky.com

Exactly how the scheme would work has not yet been hammered out. The Tories have said they would set up a royal commission - a type of public inquiry - to come up with the details.

 however we do have some information

Conservative MPs have given various examples of the kinds of volunteering teenagers could do, including delivering prescriptions or food to infirm people, being a lifeguard, supporting communities during storms and working with search and rescue.

All is well. The next time it rains we can call up the King's Own Waterproofs Brigade and be personally shepherded to the bus stop under the protection of a trained umbrella-holder, first class. Instructions in the fitting of galoshes will be given by keen youngsters in village halls. Ranks of eager kids will be taught to say "Looks like it's clearing up" and "Wrap up warm, now" before being let loose on householders contemplating another ruined carpet. And traditional techniques will not be lost either - a couple of weeks filling, stacking, moving and emptying sandbags at Aldershot should beat a bit of discipline and respect into the long-haired, work-shy, don't-know-they're-born, generation who are sure to vote Tory in future elections out of gratitude. Yup, that'll definitely work.