Sunak’s National Service rubbish is the newest signal of Tory desperation
It breaks my heart that Rishi Sunak’s National Service garbage has deflected attention away from yet more horrors in Gaza.
Charred bodies, mutilated kids. Families blown to bits by Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombs as they slept in what had been a designated safe area in western Gaza.
The grotesque irony of Sunak’s ludicrous National Service plan is that he, his party and his cheerleaders have been castigating the UK kids he claims are living in a bubble, for joining the protests on our streets against the onslaught .
And yet it is the obscenely rich Prime Minister who is so detached from reality he couldn’t work out how to use a contactless credit card.
By now you’ll know all about his National Service nonsense, dreamed up by Dad’s Army dinosaurs and rejected by any sane parent or grandparent who loves their teenagers.
It reminded me of the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. In it, the American director Michael Moore walks the streets around Capitol Hill, trying to get US senators to sign their kids up to fight in the Iraq war.
One replies with a long, incredulous stare at him. Another blanks Moore completely. A third pretends to be on the phone and so on. You get the picture. They all refuse.
It is a familiar story throughout history. And yet Sunak – whose kids will never be alongside yours and mine in combat – will hand our youngsters a choice reading like a political suicide note.
Work for free or join the army and prepare to be cannon fodder for wars in places like Russia that the politicians want to fight but don’t want their own kids doing it.
You can only assume Sunak was pushed into this by the idiot who convinced him to finally announce the election date in the driving rain last week.
Because the only people taking this seriously are the broadcast talkshow hosts hunting for engagement and social media contrarians.
Responsible (grand)parents who love their kids will tell Sunak where to go on July 4. And it won’t be pretty.
My 17 year old is currently on a week’s training to upskill himself in an area he has chosen as a potential career. Why should that be threatened by a scheme dressed up as voluntary yet is anything but? What next? The poll tax? The death penalty?
Sunak conveniently forgets his government has utterly failed young people over the past 14 years.
They’ve been educated in schools with crumbling concrete, robbed of the chance to live, study and work in nearly 30 countries without a visa because of Brexit. And left with sky high tuition fees and unable get on the housing ladder.
The voluntary work they’d be forced into if they didn’t join the army was already being done by immigrants paying their taxes before the right-wing bigots hounded them out of the country.
Sunak has zero answers to the cost of living crisis, NHS waiting times, scandal and corruption allegations, and so much else.
So young voters are another of his easy targets as he sniffs around for the crumbs of the older electorate – many of whom will never have done National Service.
Nobody would go to jail for refusing to comply with National Service under a Conservative government, Home Secretary James Cleverly said on Sunday.
But then these guys couldn’t lie straight in bed. We parents don’t want a UK throwing its weight around globally then thrusting our kids into the firing line.
So thankfully some good will come of this half-baked garbage. It will motivate the young people who probably wouldn’t have voted into knowing exactly where to put their X on July 4.
