floofloofConservatives plan to bring back mandatory National Service
frankPodmoreAnother unfunded pledge from the Conservatives. What do we want? Housing! What will we get? Conscription!
David Cameron already did this anyway with the voluntary National Citizen Service. He also promised to eventually make it involuntary but never did, presumably because it was unworkable, expensive or both. So, what has changed to make it workable or inexpensive?
The realistic prospect of an armed conflict with Russia is what has changed.
Whether we cannot afford it is irrelevant, we may have no choice. We couldn’t afford it in 1939 and it wasn’t long ago that we’d only finished paying for our WW2 debts.
Unless something drastic happens that Putin comes to his senses we are in most likelihood heading for very dark times.
We’re not the only country considering a return to National Service/Conscription.
Which is exactly why the army has been asking for more funding, which it actually needs. It doesn’t want conscription, which it recognises would be a waste of resources.
Other countries considering a bad idea doesn’t make it a good idea.
Conscription isn't fundamentally a bad idea it just needs to be built into your long term defense strategy
It is a bad idea, which is why nearly everywhere has stopped doing it and hardly anywhere has started again.
It’s certainly a bad idea to rely on conscripts to make up the bulk of your fighting force. It’s not a totally bad idea to have a population of fighting age citizens have had some basic military training and know which way to hold a gun. Countries like Finland or Switzerland have a more realistic view of what they may need to do if things ever got bad on their eastern front.
For the UK we’d have probably resorted to our nuclear deterrent before we consider putting conscripts on the front line.
In a war, the bulk of Finland's force will be made up of conscripts. Or more accurately, people who were conscripts.
The career military men will be the officers. If you look at their officer to non officer ratio in peacetime it will be absolutely bananas compared to the UK's. Because if they do get invaded by Russia, they'll immediately call up their reserves (which due to conscription is their entire eligible population) and the ratios will make more sense.