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jimmydoreisalefty May 26, 2024

UK’s Sunak promises mandatory national service for 18-year-olds if elected [26 May 2024 | Al Jazeera]

UK’s Sunak promises mandatory national service for 18-year-olds if elected [26 May 2024 | Al Jazeera] - Lemmy.World

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15826549 [https://lemmy.world/post/15826549] > >Ruling Conservative Party says it will bring back national service if it wins the July 4 general election. > > >Eighteen-year-olds will have to perform a mandatory national service if the Conservative Party is voted back to power in the United Kingdom’s July 4 election, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced. > > >The prime minister’s plan would entail young people being given a choice between a full-time placement in the armed forces for 12 months or spending one weekend a month for a year volunteering in their community, the party said.

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ccunning May 26, 2024

Maybe I’m missing something. In fact I’m sure I am as I don’t follow UK politics closely at all. Mostly what I know is from scrolling past headlines like this one.

Confusing thing #1: My understanding is the Conservative (Tory?) party is struggling so the PM called for a “snap” election.

If you’re not doing great, wouldn’t it make more sense to try and weather the storm and work to make things sunnier before the next election rather than call for an election amidst the storm?

Confusing thing #2: If you are in said storm and now looking down the barrel of an election, wouldn’t that be the opposite of the time you would want to announce your unpopular policy ideas?

This really sounds like someone who is trying to get fired instead of quit.

So what am I missing?

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sugartits

Confusing thing #1 was actually a smart move.

Reform party, who has been a bunch of useful idiots and have been diluting the Tory vote significantly have not got enough members in place to stand in every location as this will be their first general election and they are a new party.

The SNP has only just picked a new leader after the previous one stepped down and they have fallen out of favour in recent times.

Labour (main competition) was not expecting anything until November time as the running theory is that the Tories would wait for a bit to see if something would “come up” and rescue their awful polling (as per your suggestion). So even they were caught off guard and now have to scramble to organise everything. This shit isn’t easy, even for established parties.

Hell, even the Tories were caught off guard by their leader doing this.

Sunak has played an interesting card here. I doubt it will make any difference but at least he is being somewhat clever with the surprise timing of this.