This is death spiral shit. I probably look on national service more favourably than the average person and I know you cannot just throw it out as a desperate Hail Mary without building a huge amount of consensus.

I’m an American who doesn’t follow UK politics too much, but this feels like political suicide type stuff. Am I right in thinking that?

Like he was already polling bad, how the fuck is “You see that war to the east young people? Isn’t that scary? Anyway, you gotta serve now” supposed to gain him literally any support?

I feel like even the stereotypical old conservative would be hesitant about possibly voting to send their grandchildren to war.

They know the young won't vote for them anyway, so they're hoping this will do something to stem the tide with the rest of the population who would have to do the service

What kind of older person thinks “Hell yeah! I want to send my kids off to war!”?