PM’s bold gambit in world of danger
RISHI SUNAK says this election is about being prepared to deliver bold action.
He has certainly lived up to that pledge with his game-changing new plan to bring back National Service for 18-year-olds.
A policy of compulsory military placement will provoke massive debate.
Many teenagers will never have heard of National Service, which ended in 1960, and nobody under 80 will have any direct experience of it.
But we live in a time of enormously increased global tension.
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Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China pose an open threat to the West.
The PM has already said he is convinced that “the next few years will be some of the most dangerous yet most transformational our country has ever known”.
Yet our Armed Forces have been depleted by almost a third since the turn of the century.
This plan could help solve that personnel crisis at a stroke.
It also draws a clear dividing line between the Tories and Labour on defence.
Already Sir Keir Starmer has refused to make a wholehearted commitment to match the Tory pledge of increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
No doubt the Labour Left will be the loudest to shout this plan down.
But while bolstering our defences, this 12-month scheme also offers youngsters world-leading training in cyber skills.
And those who choose to take a non-military route can devote one weekend a month to volunteer work, which may also be open to older Brits.
If the plan works, it will inject the spirit of our brilliant Jabs Army into the real Army.
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Starmer’s union flak
ANGELA Rayner hailed her New Deal for Working People as “the biggest levelling-up of workers’ rights in decades”.
Labour was to outlaw zero-hours contracts. And employees would enjoy the legal right to switch off — meaning they could ignore calls and emails outside of working hours.
All of this was to be introduced inside the party’s first 100 days in government.
But late on Friday night the final package emerged — now rebranded as Labour’s Plan To Make Work Pay and watered down more than the beer in a dodgy seaside nightclub.
Less than two weeks ago Sir Keir Starmer told unions he was fully committed to the original policy.
Now furious union boss Sharon Graham said the revised scheme “has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese”.
Even the barons know the truth.
The Labour leader will U-turn on any pledge.