Refusing mandatory National Service won’t lead to prison, home secretary says after Tory policy launch

26 comments

1. So their policies are now lasting less than 24 hours before being watered down. They’re falling apart in real time.

2. So they are implementing slavery, refuse to join the military and you will be compelled to do unpaid volunteering.

   I thought my opinion of the Conservative Party could go no lower.

3. Oh to be a fly on the wall in Young Conservative WhatsApp and Telegram groups today.

   Bet its sheer popcorn 🍿 

4. The reality is it would be impossible to enforce. It would be massively unpopular in many parts of the country. You’d end up with the devolved nations and Labour councils and Mayors in England refusing to facilitate it. In fact, you’d probably have the devolved nations actively working against it. And there’d almost certainly be a poll-tax style boycott.

   In reality it would become a kind of Duke of Edinburgh award on steroids.

5. there aren’t enough prisons in the entire world to give space too all who’d refuse

6. You’d just get community service or a fine I guess

7. Okay, so the British armed forces, like most (all?) government departments, are struggling with funding and providing an effective service – I know, let’s also make them babysit massive numbers of young people who actively don’t want to be there… this should turn the entire country into an elite fighting force in no time…

8. >Refusing mandatory National Service won’t lead to prison.

   That’s a relief. I was worried for a moment there that refusing to be an indentured slave to the military industrial complex might result in the gulag.

9. If instead of pissing this £2.5bn down the drain on this – they spent it on the actual armed forces – that would make a bit more sense.

10. Why is it always the people that would never actually go to war to get blown up that are so despirate to warmonger and force people into serving?

11. I’m no politician but I’d have thought automatic prison sentences for sex offenders and animal abusers would be more of a vote winner.

12. Let’s not discuss this as if the Tories will win and implement it. The barrel is scraped to the bottom.

    I am absolutely sure this won’t fly with our armed forces,no one wants conscription,they need committed professionals

13. That was an incredibly impressively quick u-turn! What was it, two hours?

    The Tories have been getting so much practice that they’re perfecting the art of u-turning quickly and efficiently.

    Watching them do a u-turn is like watching the Red Bull team do a pitstop – they’ve done it so many times that it feels like they could do it in their sleep! Also, no one wants them to win and you know they’re probably sexually harassing someone in the background.

14. Is it 18 year olds only or “young people”? What’s the age limit on this thing?

15. Sunak meets veterans in Yorkshire, that evening announces compulsory national service for 18 year olds, then this morning, government minister announces it will not be compulsory.

    You would have to have a heart of stone, not to laugh!

    Literally making policy up on the hoof.

16. I find it interesting how national service remained in the national consciousness this long that now the Tories have decided to offer it based on feedback from their voters.

17. Personally I don’t think they’re going far enough. Bring back pressganging. Its a nice traditional British trade and it’ll get all the drunken youths in to a decent career once the brain damage has worn off

18. Scrap the rwanda plan just put the migrants your complaining about straight into the jobs your aiming to force disabled and ill people into and also the armed forces you claim you don’t have enough people for and bingo you would have a self supporting country.

19. Yes it will. It’ll just be in steps. First a warning, then a fine, then when you don’t pay the fine you will be arrested. If you resist arrest you will be overpowered. If you are able to overpower the authorities they will come back with guns and dogs and grenades and kill you.

20. Not because they don’t want to, but because they fucking can’t. Prisons are full.

    Kicking out rapists and violent criminals, in favour of an 18 year old who doesn’t want to drone strike a wedding in the middle east seems unreasonable.

21. I think the key here is “yet” – it’ll be criminal before you know it, unless you get a special exemption because mummy and daddy gave £200k to the conservatives

22. In Switzerland you can opt out of national service but you have to pay 5% more tax for the rest of your life. Thats a much better system than imprisonment and makes money rather than costs money.

23. Of course it won’t, because there’s no space to send anyone to prison.

24. “National service will now include unpaid work at corporations and retail outlets. It is merely a coincidence if conservative MPs have an affiliation with the chosen placement organisations.”

25. The overall response to this is pretty hilarious. You would think that we’re facing down ze Germans at the gates of Stalingrad sharing a rifle between two people with barrier detachments at the rear.

    Some form of national service is common in the rest of Europe, it provides a solid baseline of experience amongst the general population and I don’t know of any instances where conscripts are or have deployed on active operations (eg Danes/Germans in Afghanistan) unless they have volunteered.

    Having said that I’m in two minds given the potential to ‘dilute’ the capability of professional, volunteer units but I’m not averse to some sort of national ‘civil’ service with an emphasis placed on fitness, discipline and life skills in addition to carrying out some sort of beneficial work in the community.

    It’s irrelevant anyway; this is a dying gasp of the Tory party trying to sway the boomer vote.

26. If you don’t want to be part of your country and contribute no benefits no pension no NHS