UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to require all school-leavers to fulfil a year of military or civic service is the best idea to come out of the UK election so far, says Bloomberg Opinion’s Adrian Wooldridge.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ’s first big announcement of the election campaign was a pledge to implement mandatory national service . LONDON: The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said, “all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” I very much hope this is the fate of Rishi Sunak ’s idea of compulsory national service for school-leavers.
And there are certainly legitimate objections to the Conservatives’ big idea - from lack of detail about what it will cost and how it will be paid for, to failure to prepare the public for their new thinking. The Conservatives foolishly reinforced the impression that they are pandering to older voters by then announcing they are upgrading the triple lock on pensions to a quadruple lock.
We can no longer afford to contract out warfare to a professional cadre of soldiers while leaving the population at large to go about their business in blissful ignorance. Even the restricted military service that Sunak envisages will help to create a reservoir of skills in the population that can be called on in future conflicts.
The second problem is social fragmentation. Britain is increasingly a class-bound society in which privileged young Britons only meet their less-privileged contemporaries when they receive their Amazon parcels or decaf lattes. The higher-education system only reinforces such social division. National service would force people from different backgrounds to engage in a common experience directed at a shared aim: Defending the country from anti-democratic enemies.
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