The idea of bringing back national service to knock into shape teenage tearaways and long-haired layabouts was a staple of my youth.
Peppery comment articles along those lines in the old, broadsheet Sunday Express or News of the World would crop up intermittently through the ill-disciplined 1970s. Typically they would then be countered by the response that ‘the army doesn’t want them’ and the idea would die down for a while.
It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality
It should therefore come as no surprise that a prime minister desperate to reconnect with a long-lost tribe of social conservatives is now proposing a compulsory stint for 18-year-olds in the forces or on community projects.
Rishi Sunak and his strategists no doubt consider the policy a way of creating what Evelyn Waugh once termed ‘a tug upon the thread’ to pull back lapsed followers into an ancient fold.
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