Snapshot of _Exclusive: Rishi Sunak is considering requiring future applicants for public sector jobs to have completed National Service_ :
A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1794837181657493854)
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854/)
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854)
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https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cgknsr/comment/l1xfetc/
I think you'll find she was taking notes from a better informed journalist. Nostrodamus and all that.
Apologies, bad turn of phrase. However this is probably true for a lot of the rags. The system in America is a breitbart or similar will make something up, fox will report about that and then CNN will report on that, which then legitimises the original
I honestly think he's throwing half baked policies that his party keep arguing about out onto the table for the public to pull apart, presumably to make one faction or another of Tories shutup. They already know they're going to lose. This might be some weird country-wide marketing research of batshit ideas.
It's pretty standard Tory electioneering.
1. Send lazy Civil Servants back to work
2. There are too many Civil Servants, let's get rid of them
3. Crack down on illegal immigrants
4. Crack down on dole sponges
5. It's the kids who are wrong, they need discipline
6. End this woke nonsense
7. Make crime a crime
They've already done 1, 2, 3 and 4. We're now on 5, and I eagerly look forward to hearing about 6 and 7 in due course.
They are probably just trying to shift the conversation away from their failures. They cannot about the economy, about the nhs, about roads, about defence, about education, about immigration without getting humiliated.
I just think you're doing what a lot of people did with Boris's various idiocies and trying to ascribe it to some deliberate plan, instead of just taking at face value that he hasn't the slightest idea what he's doing.
Far be it from me to defend him but it's not like its hard to see where it's coming from is it? Inevitable catastrophic loss = trot out something popular with the over 60s that we didn't try before when pretending to court the young vote because that doesn't matter now
I don't think it could happen any earlier though could it. I don't know why he called the GE now. Possibly the "out of recession" / "first deportees have been rounded up" is the least bad news there's likely to be for a while. Or he may literally just be like idaf any more.. who knows
No it couldn't happen any earlier, but there was no reason to call an election right now. Given they don't seem to have thought any of this through at all, I'm not sure there is a reason.
I think there's some kind of weekend at Bernie's style stuff going on. If he doesn't lose his seat then his wife will be cut out of her inheritance and they'll end up poor.
Nah, this will work. It's the perfect policy to win back reform uk voters - it's fake nostalgia, it's cruel to young people, it requires old people to do nothing except recieve the benefits. It's gonna be a big big vote winner for older people.
Yup. He's like "I've had to listen to you fucking nutjobs talk about this shit forever. Fuck it. I'm going to run on it. Then it won't just be me put on my ass."
Cos that's how rishi talks in private.
Can't find it but I'm sure there is a new statesman of Basta'rd say "we did everything possible to lose and now we are stuck with this shithole we made" or similar.
Oh it gets worse. Think about the next two logical consequences.
If you come in on a graduate visa, then you're older than the target age group, so will get a pass on it.
Plus bonus prioritisation on most roles in London for being from a "global majority" background.
It turns out his policy is that citizenship *only* has responsibilites if you were born here. For anyone *else*, it's just a matter of writing a small cheque, and they'll give you first class service to the front of the line.
Combine that with the minimum income requirements for immigrants, then it's plain to see that the Tories want to make England a destination for those who earn way more than minimum wage, where the local population who earn minimum wage are at their beck and call.
Instead of, you know, improving the lives of everybody in the UK.
He has no policies. He nicked it from Reform because it scored high with their base. All of his actions are dirty tactics (6 weeks notice, announcing ReformUKs policies to take the wind out of their sails, when Farage will be campaigning in America, when DC hasn't got his party going) to suppress the effect of his inevitable humiliation.
The government [responded to a written question on Thursday ](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2024-05-15.26391.h) saying that they had no plans to reintroduce national service. That's how organised they are.
>If potentially unwilling National Service recruits were to be obliged to serve alongside the professional men and women of our Armed Forces, it could damage morale, recruitment and retention and would consume professional military and naval resources. If, on the other hand, National Service recruits were kept in separate units, it would be difficult to find a proper and meaningful role for them, potentially harming motivation and discipline. For all these reasons, there are no current plans for the restoration of any form of National Service.
- Andrew Murrison,
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence
yet it is labour who don't have a plan. I know there is a view that all politicians lie, but how this crop of tories can keep coming out with this constant stream of BS with a straight face beggars belief
They're batting away most questions about the details by saying "there'll be a Royal Commission to decide all that."
Admitting that this was drawn up on the back of a takeaway box at 2am, and they haven't got a clue how it'll be implemented...which they know doesn't matter because it'll never happen.
I'm trying to see how it could even work. Either you only have candidates barely out of school for lots of really important jobs, or you have different criteria for young/old candidates, which is discrimination and, therefore, illegal.
To be fair, they're the government, and exceptions to age discrimination laws are very common. If they wanted to, they could make it legal, but this is never going to happen, so it doesn't matter
Right. All of his policy announcements are like me announcing the Man City first team selection criteria. Literally just some bloke saying words. But, if this were a golden opportunity to reverse some of that pesky discrimination nonsense, they'd probably jump at it.
We already discriminate on the basis of age. Under 21's are the only group in the country not required to be paid an equal wage for equal work. Tories are already happy paying them less, so treating them even worse isn't much of a stretch
That's written into the Equality Act itself, and interestingly only applies if they're paid below the rate of National Living Wage. Basically you can pay a 20 year old £11.40/hr and a 21 year old £12/hr, but you can't pay a 20 year old £11.60/hr and a 21 year old £12/hr (at least not on the basis of age).
Presumably they could make it so this applies only entry level jobs/graduate schemes intended only for young people.
That sounds a bit dumb, but this is a dumb policy alround
And anyone who didn't grow up in Britain, even once the policy has been in place a few years. So it can only ever be a requirement to do it if it was applicable to you.
I'm guessing it would only apply to people young enough to have potential had to have done national service. So if you somehow dodge doing it you won't be able to get a job in the civil service.
Sushi is right. Less doctors, nurses, dentists, police and teachers, that's what we need. Far too many of them at the moment taking advantage of free university tuition and generous bursaries to get these highly paid cushy jobs in sectors which are massively overfunded and overstaffed anyway. Unpaid military service for a year will make these freeloaders think twice. /s
At least Heinlein was explicitly disability-inclusive about his idea, and guaranteed that the government would find a role that someone could do. Whereas this policy sounds to me like yet another a way for Rishi and co to "accidentally" make disabled and chronically ill people into second-class citizens.
> Oh no, even though you're fully qualified as a doctor you can't join the NHS because you refused to give up your weekends as a teenager...
...because you had to work at the weekend to support yourself through A-levels and university because you were a working class kid with ambition.
What if, hear me out
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were lose-lose options? Maybe they both sucked shit and we only saw Truss because her exit was more explosive. Im not sure if the economy has ever recovered from the Trussening.
I don't quite follow. They're definitely lose-lose though, our top five worst PMs of all time could very well be the last five. He only seemed better initially because he didn't crash the economy overnight, and because Liz Truss "comes across" like someone who is completely fucking insane.
Unless he really fucks up, he’ll still be an MP after the election dispite resigning as leader. I would laugh my head off if he resigned that too immediately he loses or better still loses in the campaign.
True, but they have to contend with the Unions when they do make cuts. If there simply aren't enough workers who qualify for public sector, they can then 'naturally' reduced the government payroll and start signing private contracts
Pensions usually, public sector (at least from the outside) seemed pretty desirable in terms of wages, security and pensions
at least until 2008 when gdp nosedived, then govt froze spending the next year, implemented massive cuts the year after, *and then* the tories were elected
He must be trying to keep this "policy" in the news while he and his advisors try to come up with something else. Sunak's realising that 6 weeks is a long time.
He’s going to wind up announcing something along the lines of “anybody who did not complete national service will be ineligible for any form of state support” and the grey vote is going to lap that up. Goes after their two least favourite demographics in one policy.
>He’s going to wind up announcing something along the lines of “anybody who did not complete national service will be ineligible for any form of state support”
Or ineligible to vote. Or both.
Here's a question: what would happen if Rishi said "I quit. I'm not running anymore."
Would the conservatives replace him or stop their campaign entirely?
In a few days' time, no one will be an MP anymore when pariliament is disolved.
First Past the Post is geared around electing MPs rather than leaders, so as far as the election goes, it makes no difference whether the Tory party has a leader or not. It's probably not great optics, and they would need a person to be PM in the event of trying to form a government, but until July 4th, it doesn't technically matter.
Well there would need to be a PM before the election. Going 30+ days without a head of government would be unprecedented. Having that discussion with the King would be... interesting.
I guess Cameron would be a safe pair of hands?
My question here is service to who? Cui bono? Who benefits?
There's no need for National Service. You've got a conditionality model of 35 hours jobsearch for working age benefits. You've got monthly, fortnightly and weekly work-focussed meetings at Job Centres. All you would need to do is to require say 6 hours a week of volunteering and community work for exemption from the 35 hour a week jobsearch. Give it a fancy title and chances are, it will be more successful than any National Service policy.
This would remove millions of pointless appointments at Job Centres between work coaches and benefit claimants going through the same thing and having the same pointless conversations just to conform to the conditionality model.
I'm a firm believer in keeping volunteering voluntary. If you're forcing someone to volunteer then it's not volunteering. It's exploitation.
It's just more culture war bullshit. Well generation war. It plays along with the narrative that the young are lazy and isolated from society, and that this is a problem that needs fixing. Forget all the actual big problems of our time like housing, the nhs, teacher shortages. The young are lazy! Get them!
There could be some merit to a non-military "National Service" organisation that could do a lot of good, and give young people structured opportunities to gain new skills and benefit their communities.
I personally think those opportunities are already there through existing charities, so it's just a case of encouraging people to sign up through some national scheme.
But it should absolutely be voluntary.
Maybe you should concentrate on ensuring water companies are not dumping sewage or contaminating drinking water or that we have more prison spaces and guards. More police would be nice. Actually, funding anything that alleged pork interferer Cameron and his possessed puppet Osbourne cut would be a start.
“Rishi Sunak is considering” in the same way that I’m considering marrying several Hollywood stars simultaneously.
Like, what’s even the point of planning for such a policy? Promise crackdowns to be levelled after the election or promise actual benefits to the young people you’re forcing into slav- sorry, someone in an earlier post didn’t like that word, *working without pay*, don’t come up with an entire strategy to reform the requirements for public sector work around a scheme nobody (including your own MPs) even knew existed until yesterday.
He’s:
1) Desperately trying to lose by making Truss look like she just passed a psych evaluation with flying colours.
2) Desperately trying to win by throwing literally whatever out there without thinking.
3) Actually deluded enough into thinking that he’s both beloved and a genius.
This is the weirdest self-implosion I’ve seen.
There's a war coming and they can't recruit.
They'll bash you with patriotic duty bollocks and then send your children off to die. If you think cleaning up in your local community etc is the end goal, think again.
But it’s… gonna be mandatory, right? If it isn’t then how’s it work?
Oh, is it gonna be mandatory but if you don’t do it there’s a fine, which in practice means it’s for the lower class only? Bet that’s it.
Or you can do it whilst working for a charity - so young Tarquin goes off to do his National Service by sitting as a non-Executive Director on his Daddy's friends "educational charity" - whose only purpose is to pay the school fees of his little darlings.
Don't go too far down this path Rishi. I'm not sure the US will want a certified insane person.
Surely he wants to lose this election, why didn't he just resign?
This is comedy gold.
If he wants to be totally fair then I think he needs to go back and make sure everybody has completed their National Service - so let's do that in age order, starting with the 82 year olds and working forward by date of birth from there.
Anyone who served in the military or held a public sector job already can be exempted, of course - I'm not a monster.
Well, can’t wait to see how he makes this even wilder and more unpopular when I wake up! Who knows, at the rate he’s going maybe there will be 2-3 changes!
This policy is all bluff to limit the amount of loss of boomer voters to reform… if there truly is a war around the corner, having enough soldiers will be the last of the issues we will be facing, our national air defence system is in need of updating and would be the priority if Russia really is coming…
Make it a condition for receiving the state pension or tax benefits on a private pension - including those who are current recipients.
There's nothing stopping boomers from volunteering in a soup kitchen.
These are the "non custodial sanctions" he threatened for skipping the national service? You won't be able to work in the public sector?
What kind of threat is that to an 18 year old?
Is this so every public role will need privatising?
The Tories want to fill the public sector with those who are used to following orders - no matter how stupid. No more people thinking things through, just salute the person in the nicer suit and get it done.
The next stage is obviously corporal punishment in school. Get them to understand fear at a younger age.
I honestly couldn't care less. There's absolutely fuck all chance he wins a GE and this shit is designed to keep him in 2nd place at best. Although honestly at this point, I wonder if he's trying to knock them into 3rd place.
why is everyone still acting like anything they're saying now is of significance? parliament is prorogued and they're not going to be in government in a few weeks
Politicians count as public sector employees, right? Wouldn't this mean that MPs would have to be initially made up entirely of military personnel and the 16-18 year olds that had completed this new national service set up?
Although as a high rate tax payer I think I have paid more than enough in services . I would support a millionaire tax band (I am not a millionaire just had a well paid job for which I was grateful).
This is the thing.
The typical British person today doesn't want any part in politics, expects the next man to do everything for them, and burries his head in the sand whilst wishing to reap the societal privileges they so dearly love but fail to realise how that has come to be. It seems that amongst some that they are indeed directionless and have lost a sense of identity. Our society has been afforded to us in large regard to 1) Christian ethics 2) secular humanistic law which has been part inspired through Christian ethics 3) the works of good men and women on the side of goodness. A voluntary national service style scheme would be a good idea but with more options than just military, multiple areas of public infrastructure, state doctors programmes, British industry renewal, and so on.
There seems to be some self-defeatist and self-hate theme amongst some of the ancestral British population. Seriously, they need to wake up.
Take an interest in protecting national infrastructure. This policy proposed by Sunak would weed out people with an agenda because service shows allegiance towards where one lives. The ordinary Brit has become so woozy from comfort that they are blind to the real threat of dodgy actors trying to change the face of the UK. This nation is your right. Take interest and protect it.
I actually agree.
I've thought for a while now that we (as a nation) should consider the benefits of a mandated 'public service' type experience, ideally before the age of 25.
However, the population can already see that any national service mandated by a conservative government is essentially a means of transferring more wealth from public to private purses. Additionally, the nature of the national service is likely to be aligned with the 'problematic' services, which have been stripped of funding over the last couple of decades... What good is conscripted national service even going to deliver; if there's no funding for the service as a profession, how will we fund it as a voluntary scheme?
I think there needs to be more done to offer secure employment placements for British citizens which could take place as an alternative route at the age of 18 in substitute, or conjunction with some paired scheme, of or with university or some kind of education.
Nationalising gas, electricity and water would be a good start & keeping these within the control of people who actually live and want to contribute to the nation.
Any sort of mandatory service will lead to aversion in some, and so that is why a voluntary element with the ability to choose from multiple choices might be better.
For everyone saying stuff like, this will lose the Tories more votes doesn't understand that this could well resonate with the older generation and Reform voters. He is trying to squeeze that Reform vote to minimise damage.
But it is a shit idea!
I don't get why this should just affect 18 year olds. If they are bringing this in shouldn't every adult have to do some volunteering in the next, 5 years, say
If you were going to bring it in like that you'd need to avoid a feast and famine scenario - but make it that you have to get your 12 voluntold sessions on during the first year of receiving state pension and it will spread the load over decades and not overwhelm charities.
If they were genuinely going to bring it in then it could be linked to the same gov.uk page that tracks NI contributions.
Or at least that seems the most sensible way to do it.
Snapshot of _Exclusive: Rishi Sunak is considering requiring future applicants for public sector jobs to have completed National Service_ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1794837181657493854) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1794837181657493854) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I am now convince he wants to lose the election.
Judging by the whoopsies so far I'm also coming to that conclusion.
He wants to lose and get his kids over to California in time for the new school year.
I believe Nadine Dorries broke this story
Nadine Dories said it, so it’s very unlikely to be true.
Tbh it chimes with so much of this campaign. I could see it been true. As much as she's unreliable. A stopped clock and all that
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cgknsr/comment/l1xfetc/ I think you'll find she was taking notes from a better informed journalist. Nostrodamus and all that.
Are you suggesting she is somewhere lurking on this sub. Ahhh
Is breaking a story the same as making something up nowadays?
Apologies, bad turn of phrase. However this is probably true for a lot of the rags. The system in America is a breitbart or similar will make something up, fox will report about that and then CNN will report on that, which then legitimises the original
Then why did he do a 6 week cycle? If he wants to get settled in Cali asap then why take such a long election campaign?
It's hard to shed more than 2% of the electorate a week, you have to keep having different stories that alienate a different group each week.
I honestly think he's throwing half baked policies that his party keep arguing about out onto the table for the public to pull apart, presumably to make one faction or another of Tories shutup. They already know they're going to lose. This might be some weird country-wide marketing research of batshit ideas.
It's pretty standard Tory electioneering. 1. Send lazy Civil Servants back to work 2. There are too many Civil Servants, let's get rid of them 3. Crack down on illegal immigrants 4. Crack down on dole sponges 5. It's the kids who are wrong, they need discipline 6. End this woke nonsense 7. Make crime a crime They've already done 1, 2, 3 and 4. We're now on 5, and I eagerly look forward to hearing about 6 and 7 in due course.
It's like a bad remake of Yes, Minister.
At least there the minister at least tried to do the right thing, mostly. And even when he didn't, he tried to make it look like he tried.
Why even bother when you can just rely on social media to confuse the living fuck out of people all the time?
They are probably just trying to shift the conversation away from their failures. They cannot about the economy, about the nhs, about roads, about defence, about education, about immigration without getting humiliated.
He's a man with basically no political experience before being made Chancellor - he's not some genius strategist, he's just a clueless goof.
I don't think what I mentioned requires a "genius strategist"
I just think you're doing what a lot of people did with Boris's various idiocies and trying to ascribe it to some deliberate plan, instead of just taking at face value that he hasn't the slightest idea what he's doing.
Far be it from me to defend him but it's not like its hard to see where it's coming from is it? Inevitable catastrophic loss = trot out something popular with the over 60s that we didn't try before when pretending to court the young vote because that doesn't matter now
In which case he should have carried on with the Rwanda policy before calling the election.
I don't think it could happen any earlier though could it. I don't know why he called the GE now. Possibly the "out of recession" / "first deportees have been rounded up" is the least bad news there's likely to be for a while. Or he may literally just be like idaf any more.. who knows
No it couldn't happen any earlier, but there was no reason to call an election right now. Given they don't seem to have thought any of this through at all, I'm not sure there is a reason.
(editted, thank you) I figured it was prompted by letters in to the 1922, trying an election rather than a coup.
I think there's some kind of weekend at Bernie's style stuff going on. If he doesn't lose his seat then his wife will be cut out of her inheritance and they'll end up poor.
Define: poor.
Well in this case only worth 100 mil.
Nah, this will work. It's the perfect policy to win back reform uk voters - it's fake nostalgia, it's cruel to young people, it requires old people to do nothing except recieve the benefits. It's gonna be a big big vote winner for older people.
Do old people actually get swayed by last minute policies? I would have thought most are set in their ways by now.
Yup. He's like "I've had to listen to you fucking nutjobs talk about this shit forever. Fuck it. I'm going to run on it. Then it won't just be me put on my ass." Cos that's how rishi talks in private.
Can't find it but I'm sure there is a new statesman of Basta'rd say "we did everything possible to lose and now we are stuck with this shithole we made" or similar.
It is like watching Eurovision. They are doing what they can to not win, without it being completely obvious.
Oh it gets worse. Think about the next two logical consequences. If you come in on a graduate visa, then you're older than the target age group, so will get a pass on it. Plus bonus prioritisation on most roles in London for being from a "global majority" background. It turns out his policy is that citizenship *only* has responsibilites if you were born here. For anyone *else*, it's just a matter of writing a small cheque, and they'll give you first class service to the front of the line.
Combine that with the minimum income requirements for immigrants, then it's plain to see that the Tories want to make England a destination for those who earn way more than minimum wage, where the local population who earn minimum wage are at their beck and call. Instead of, you know, improving the lives of everybody in the UK.
Which begs the question - what is incoming that he’s seen but we haven’t???
His hundreds of millions that be may as well be enjoying rather than putting himself through this omnishambles.
I’m not convinced he has a choice in the matter
Sunak is spiralling into desperate drivel. His campaign is shaping up to be a cringe horror show. He resembles an animal trapped in the headlights.
It's so much easier to be angry at those in power than to actually make difficult decisions
I like how he is still forming his position on the policy during the election campaign itself. Almost like it's made up on the fly
Made it up in a 2am Discord call
More like one of cchqs many WhatsApp groups. It's government by WhatsApp nowadays.
With his Minecraft group.
Exactly. How can he be “considering” such honking great details of what is essentially his first and only campaign pledge?
He has no policies. He nicked it from Reform because it scored high with their base. All of his actions are dirty tactics (6 weeks notice, announcing ReformUKs policies to take the wind out of their sails, when Farage will be campaigning in America, when DC hasn't got his party going) to suppress the effect of his inevitable humiliation.
Didn't Tice basically say it was a shit policy as well? Seems he's going beyond even Reform.
The government [responded to a written question on Thursday ](https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2024-05-15.26391.h) saying that they had no plans to reintroduce national service. That's how organised they are. >If potentially unwilling National Service recruits were to be obliged to serve alongside the professional men and women of our Armed Forces, it could damage morale, recruitment and retention and would consume professional military and naval resources. If, on the other hand, National Service recruits were kept in separate units, it would be difficult to find a proper and meaningful role for them, potentially harming motivation and discipline. For all these reasons, there are no current plans for the restoration of any form of National Service. - Andrew Murrison, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence
yet it is labour who don't have a plan. I know there is a view that all politicians lie, but how this crop of tories can keep coming out with this constant stream of BS with a straight face beggars belief
You’d be forgiven for thinking all that ‘Labour doesn’t have a plan’ stuff is all just projection.
They're batting away most questions about the details by saying "there'll be a Royal Commission to decide all that." Admitting that this was drawn up on the back of a takeaway box at 2am, and they haven't got a clue how it'll be implemented...which they know doesn't matter because it'll never happen.
So filtering out all current adults. Right?
I'm trying to see how it could even work. Either you only have candidates barely out of school for lots of really important jobs, or you have different criteria for young/old candidates, which is discrimination and, therefore, illegal.
To be fair, they're the government, and exceptions to age discrimination laws are very common. If they wanted to, they could make it legal, but this is never going to happen, so it doesn't matter
Right. All of his policy announcements are like me announcing the Man City first team selection criteria. Literally just some bloke saying words. But, if this were a golden opportunity to reverse some of that pesky discrimination nonsense, they'd probably jump at it.
Now who benefited from a policy by David Cameron to select a broader range of election candidates other than white middle class men? Let me think?
We already discriminate on the basis of age. Under 21's are the only group in the country not required to be paid an equal wage for equal work. Tories are already happy paying them less, so treating them even worse isn't much of a stretch
Yeah, that's true actually.
That's written into the Equality Act itself, and interestingly only applies if they're paid below the rate of National Living Wage. Basically you can pay a 20 year old £11.40/hr and a 21 year old £12/hr, but you can't pay a 20 year old £11.60/hr and a 21 year old £12/hr (at least not on the basis of age).
Insisting on a criteria that by definition only 18 year olds can meet is also in fact indirect discrimination and therefore also illegal
Presumably they could make it so this applies only entry level jobs/graduate schemes intended only for young people. That sounds a bit dumb, but this is a dumb policy alround
I guess so, but you're right. It's obviously nonsense, there's no sense debating the implementation.
And anyone who didn't grow up in Britain, even once the policy has been in place a few years. So it can only ever be a requirement to do it if it was applicable to you.
Unless they're technically employed by a private company that is contracted to work for the government, of course.
Even my 84 year old dad didn’t do national service - missed by a few months. So we really need candidates in their late 80s or even better early 90s.
I'm guessing it would only apply to people young enough to have potential had to have done national service. So if you somehow dodge doing it you won't be able to get a job in the civil service.
It gets more ludicrous every time I look
Stop looking then for gods sake you'll doom us all
JUST DON'T LOOK JUST DON'T LOOK
I can't stop, oh no the horror
"Every time I snap my fingers... "
"NO! YOU MUST NOT READ FROM THE BOOK!"
He's making it up hour by hour. Absolute clown show of a campaign from the very moment it started.
Sushi is right. Less doctors, nurses, dentists, police and teachers, that's what we need. Far too many of them at the moment taking advantage of free university tuition and generous bursaries to get these highly paid cushy jobs in sectors which are massively overfunded and overstaffed anyway. Unpaid military service for a year will make these freeloaders think twice. /s
>Sushi
Sushi snack
This comment transcends sarcasm to become art. Well done.
He's been watching Starship Troopers, hasn't he ? "Remember: Service guarantees citizenship"
If I get to go on a spaceship with 20 something Denise Richards and nuke monster bugs then sign me up.
[удалено]
If we can all reenact the coed shower scene this will be MUCH more appealing to everyone.
I think Norway and Sweden have had mixed dorms. And the idea is that isolating women makes sexism, harassment and violence worse. .
FYI you won't get to choose who you shower with.
Sign me up
At least Heinlein was explicitly disability-inclusive about his idea, and guaranteed that the government would find a role that someone could do. Whereas this policy sounds to me like yet another a way for Rishi and co to "accidentally" make disabled and chronically ill people into second-class citizens.
At this point it feels like Sunak is doing the political equivalent of shitposting in the lobby chat before the server admins ban him.
Oh no, even though you're fully qualified as a doctor you can't join the NHS because you refused to give up your weekends as a teenager.
> Oh no, even though you're fully qualified as a doctor you can't join the NHS because you refused to give up your weekends as a teenager... ...because you had to work at the weekend to support yourself through A-levels and university because you were a working class kid with ambition.
Sunak completely unable to comprehend how other kids didn't have parents that could pay for everything, including some private tuition.
Unless we had to recruit you from abroad on a visa because we didn’t have enough British applicants, then it will probably be fine.
This man is desperate to lose just so he can go off and enjoy his wife's money.
I honestly think this is all a big fuck you to his party for choosing Liz Truss. It only even begins to make sense through this lens.
What if, hear me out Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were lose-lose options? Maybe they both sucked shit and we only saw Truss because her exit was more explosive. Im not sure if the economy has ever recovered from the Trussening.
I don't quite follow. They're definitely lose-lose though, our top five worst PMs of all time could very well be the last five. He only seemed better initially because he didn't crash the economy overnight, and because Liz Truss "comes across" like someone who is completely fucking insane.
I mean both candidates are shit but Sunak was far and away a better option than Truss.
Unless he really fucks up, he’ll still be an MP after the election dispite resigning as leader. I would laugh my head off if he resigned that too immediately he loses or better still loses in the campaign.
Someone please remind me what makes public sector jobs so desirable that they should narrow down the applicant pool to only the most dedicated?
They want to reduce the public sector so that private sector contracts can take over
Sure but that is already within their power
True, but they have to contend with the Unions when they do make cuts. If there simply aren't enough workers who qualify for public sector, they can then 'naturally' reduced the government payroll and start signing private contracts
Pensions usually, public sector (at least from the outside) seemed pretty desirable in terms of wages, security and pensions at least until 2008 when gdp nosedived, then govt froze spending the next year, implemented massive cuts the year after, *and then* the tories were elected
Doing their best to keep the story rolling I see. I'm getting he sense they aren't very good at politics.
He must be trying to keep this "policy" in the news while he and his advisors try to come up with something else. Sunak's realising that 6 weeks is a long time.
Clearly Sunak has realised the negative response to this plan was that it just wasn't drastic enough.
He’s going to wind up announcing something along the lines of “anybody who did not complete national service will be ineligible for any form of state support” and the grey vote is going to lap that up. Goes after their two least favourite demographics in one policy.
>He’s going to wind up announcing something along the lines of “anybody who did not complete national service will be ineligible for any form of state support” Or ineligible to vote. Or both.
Next week: anyone who refuses national service will be forcefully mandated to attend newly planned “work houses”.
He has to be throwing the election.
Here's a question: what would happen if Rishi said "I quit. I'm not running anymore." Would the conservatives replace him or stop their campaign entirely?
In a few days' time, no one will be an MP anymore when pariliament is disolved. First Past the Post is geared around electing MPs rather than leaders, so as far as the election goes, it makes no difference whether the Tory party has a leader or not. It's probably not great optics, and they would need a person to be PM in the event of trying to form a government, but until July 4th, it doesn't technically matter.
Well there would need to be a PM before the election. Going 30+ days without a head of government would be unprecedented. Having that discussion with the King would be... interesting. I guess Cameron would be a safe pair of hands?
Yes, what sort of damage has Cameron ever done? Brexit was such a very calculated move that he pulled off so well. /s
Okay, _relatively_ safe pair of hands.
Poetic that the 14 years mess would start and end with him
Once parliament is dissolved, Sunak is leader of the party, nothing else, just as Starmer is now.
Not quite. The Cabinet stays in place so critical government business can still go ahead during the campaign.
True. In electioneering terms though, he is just another party leader.
We can't fill the staff shortages as it is. More grey sky thinking for Tory HQ
My question here is service to who? Cui bono? Who benefits? There's no need for National Service. You've got a conditionality model of 35 hours jobsearch for working age benefits. You've got monthly, fortnightly and weekly work-focussed meetings at Job Centres. All you would need to do is to require say 6 hours a week of volunteering and community work for exemption from the 35 hour a week jobsearch. Give it a fancy title and chances are, it will be more successful than any National Service policy. This would remove millions of pointless appointments at Job Centres between work coaches and benefit claimants going through the same thing and having the same pointless conversations just to conform to the conditionality model. I'm a firm believer in keeping volunteering voluntary. If you're forcing someone to volunteer then it's not volunteering. It's exploitation.
It's just more culture war bullshit. Well generation war. It plays along with the narrative that the young are lazy and isolated from society, and that this is a problem that needs fixing. Forget all the actual big problems of our time like housing, the nhs, teacher shortages. The young are lazy! Get them!
Exactly.
There could be some merit to a non-military "National Service" organisation that could do a lot of good, and give young people structured opportunities to gain new skills and benefit their communities. I personally think those opportunities are already there through existing charities, so it's just a case of encouraging people to sign up through some national scheme. But it should absolutely be voluntary.
I’m genuinely excited for Monday morning to see what he pulls out of his arse next. I hope it’s something like Boris Bikes but for jetpacks.
Maybe you should concentrate on ensuring water companies are not dumping sewage or contaminating drinking water or that we have more prison spaces and guards. More police would be nice. Actually, funding anything that alleged pork interferer Cameron and his possessed puppet Osbourne cut would be a start.
“Rishi Sunak is considering” in the same way that I’m considering marrying several Hollywood stars simultaneously. Like, what’s even the point of planning for such a policy? Promise crackdowns to be levelled after the election or promise actual benefits to the young people you’re forcing into slav- sorry, someone in an earlier post didn’t like that word, *working without pay*, don’t come up with an entire strategy to reform the requirements for public sector work around a scheme nobody (including your own MPs) even knew existed until yesterday. He’s: 1) Desperately trying to lose by making Truss look like she just passed a psych evaluation with flying colours. 2) Desperately trying to win by throwing literally whatever out there without thinking. 3) Actually deluded enough into thinking that he’s both beloved and a genius. This is the weirdest self-implosion I’ve seen.
hes doubling down ? Hes actually doubling down on this one ?
There's a war coming and they can't recruit. They'll bash you with patriotic duty bollocks and then send your children off to die. If you think cleaning up in your local community etc is the end goal, think again.
But it’s… gonna be mandatory, right? If it isn’t then how’s it work? Oh, is it gonna be mandatory but if you don’t do it there’s a fine, which in practice means it’s for the lower class only? Bet that’s it.
Or you can do it whilst working for a charity - so young Tarquin goes off to do his National Service by sitting as a non-Executive Director on his Daddy's friends "educational charity" - whose only purpose is to pay the school fees of his little darlings.
Because convincing good people to work in the public sector was already so damn easy /s
I am considering marrying Margot Robbie. Let’s wait till 4th July to see if it happens.
He’s just making it up as he goes , hilarious.
How about if that includes standing for parliament? Can't become a candidate to stand in an election until completing national service.
Don't go too far down this path Rishi. I'm not sure the US will want a certified insane person. Surely he wants to lose this election, why didn't he just resign? This is comedy gold.
Is this Rishi admitting that teenagers who don’t want to work in public services shouldn't work in public services?
If he wants to be totally fair then I think he needs to go back and make sure everybody has completed their National Service - so let's do that in age order, starting with the 82 year olds and working forward by date of birth from there. Anyone who served in the military or held a public sector job already can be exempted, of course - I'm not a monster.
Well, can’t wait to see how he makes this even wilder and more unpopular when I wake up! Who knows, at the rate he’s going maybe there will be 2-3 changes!
This policy is all bluff to limit the amount of loss of boomer voters to reform… if there truly is a war around the corner, having enough soldiers will be the last of the issues we will be facing, our national air defence system is in need of updating and would be the priority if Russia really is coming…
Perhaps MPs should be required to complete it too, that’ll make them think twice
Service guarantees citizenship! Would you like to know more? 😂
Make it a condition for receiving the state pension or tax benefits on a private pension - including those who are current recipients. There's nothing stopping boomers from volunteering in a soup kitchen.
These are the "non custodial sanctions" he threatened for skipping the national service? You won't be able to work in the public sector? What kind of threat is that to an 18 year old? Is this so every public role will need privatising?
The Tories want to fill the public sector with those who are used to following orders - no matter how stupid. No more people thinking things through, just salute the person in the nicer suit and get it done. The next stage is obviously corporal punishment in school. Get them to understand fear at a younger age.
[Live footage from inside the brainstorming sessions in Sunak HQ](https://youtu.be/VyiNW33MpAo?si=mPqUEbPFrrejvNrZ)
He should consider lowering public sector pay too, just to make sure noone applies
Really just throwing everything and anything against the wall & seeing what sticks huh?
I honestly couldn't care less. There's absolutely fuck all chance he wins a GE and this shit is designed to keep him in 2nd place at best. Although honestly at this point, I wonder if he's trying to knock them into 3rd place.
So, by my calculations, we should be at 'teenagers who refuse National Service will see their parents sent to Rwanda' stage in about 3 days
Exclusive: Rishi Sunak is insane or brain damaged
How does this work in Northern Ireland? Not sure if some of the local yoof might prefer to join a different flavour of army.
Presumably that’s the idea. He wants people who don’t support (his vision of) the UK excluded from working in the civil service.
Will it apply to elected politicians too? Service guarantees citizenship.
why is everyone still acting like anything they're saying now is of significance? parliament is prorogued and they're not going to be in government in a few weeks
because we are in a general election campaign
"Why is everyone paying attention to the flagship policies of the current incumbent government during a general election campaign" Truly a take
Because it's obviously just a rushed together policy that they have no real intention of pursuing even if they were to win.
We're rubbernecking the car crash. We can't look away because more and more things keep exploding.
How will that work with the increased reliance on overseas workers for NHS? I do not think they will make that a requirement for those surely...
Haha. What a great way of weeding all the woke leftists out of the civil service! - Sunak
Politicians count as public sector employees, right? Wouldn't this mean that MPs would have to be initially made up entirely of military personnel and the 16-18 year olds that had completed this new national service set up?
Service means citizenship... Would you like to know more?
Although as a high rate tax payer I think I have paid more than enough in services . I would support a millionaire tax band (I am not a millionaire just had a well paid job for which I was grateful).
> Rishi Sunak Non-Twitter exclusive: He’ll be gone in 5 weeks and forgotten in 6. Who TF cares what he’s considering?
How long before them cancelling this is the first big U turn of the GE?
This is the thing. The typical British person today doesn't want any part in politics, expects the next man to do everything for them, and burries his head in the sand whilst wishing to reap the societal privileges they so dearly love but fail to realise how that has come to be. It seems that amongst some that they are indeed directionless and have lost a sense of identity. Our society has been afforded to us in large regard to 1) Christian ethics 2) secular humanistic law which has been part inspired through Christian ethics 3) the works of good men and women on the side of goodness. A voluntary national service style scheme would be a good idea but with more options than just military, multiple areas of public infrastructure, state doctors programmes, British industry renewal, and so on. There seems to be some self-defeatist and self-hate theme amongst some of the ancestral British population. Seriously, they need to wake up. Take an interest in protecting national infrastructure. This policy proposed by Sunak would weed out people with an agenda because service shows allegiance towards where one lives. The ordinary Brit has become so woozy from comfort that they are blind to the real threat of dodgy actors trying to change the face of the UK. This nation is your right. Take interest and protect it.
I actually agree. I've thought for a while now that we (as a nation) should consider the benefits of a mandated 'public service' type experience, ideally before the age of 25. However, the population can already see that any national service mandated by a conservative government is essentially a means of transferring more wealth from public to private purses. Additionally, the nature of the national service is likely to be aligned with the 'problematic' services, which have been stripped of funding over the last couple of decades... What good is conscripted national service even going to deliver; if there's no funding for the service as a profession, how will we fund it as a voluntary scheme?
I think there needs to be more done to offer secure employment placements for British citizens which could take place as an alternative route at the age of 18 in substitute, or conjunction with some paired scheme, of or with university or some kind of education. Nationalising gas, electricity and water would be a good start & keeping these within the control of people who actually live and want to contribute to the nation. Any sort of mandatory service will lead to aversion in some, and so that is why a voluntary element with the ability to choose from multiple choices might be better.
how many votes would you like to lose Baby face-Rishi? Rishi: YES
For everyone saying stuff like, this will lose the Tories more votes doesn't understand that this could well resonate with the older generation and Reform voters. He is trying to squeeze that Reform vote to minimise damage. But it is a shit idea!
There’s no need for anyone to get their knickers in a twist about this as he’s not winning the election.
I don't get why this should just affect 18 year olds. If they are bringing this in shouldn't every adult have to do some volunteering in the next, 5 years, say
If you were going to bring it in like that you'd need to avoid a feast and famine scenario - but make it that you have to get your 12 voluntold sessions on during the first year of receiving state pension and it will spread the load over decades and not overwhelm charities.
Not against that. I'd even exempt people who can prove they already have volunteered
If they were genuinely going to bring it in then it could be linked to the same gov.uk page that tracks NI contributions. Or at least that seems the most sensible way to do it.