Rishi Sunak has vowed to bring back national service for 18-year-olds to create a “renewed sense of pride in our country” if he wins the general election.
Under the mandatory scheme, teenagers would be 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.
Labour branded the announcement “another desperate unfunded commitment”, which would cost an estimated £2.5bn each year.
It comes as Wes Streeting warned striking doctors he would not meet their huge pay demands, and has vowed he would be “a shop steward for patients” as health secretary.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, the shadow health secretary spoke of his plan to tackle of record waiting lists and the ongoing pay disputes, stating: “The NHS is not the envy of the world.”
Sir Keir Starmer also confirmed on Saturday that he wanted to lower the voting age to 16, and sought to question why voters should have trust in Mr Sunak’s general election proposals if Michael Gove appears to have “lost faith” in the PM by joining the record exodus of Tory MPs.
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Tory MP defends Sunak’s national service pledge
Senior Tory Tobias Ellwood has said he agrees that not only 18-year-olds should be made to carry out national service, as per Rishi Sunak’s new election pledge, but that “you have to start somewhere”.
“We don’t know when this threat will grow. Will it increase? Will it escalate? So as 18-year-olds go through, they are then trained, and then armed – that way they can receive a course very, very quickly and upgrade that,” the former defence committee chair told LBC on Sunday morning.
“So all 18-year-olds will then move through this prism, if you like, of training, whether it be civilian or military, to prepare us for the longevity – we’re talking of the next couple of decades when the threat is going to be far, far greater than we’ve seen for the last three decades.
“The West’s ability to manage insecurity across the world has severely been tested already, and this is a wise precaution for the whole of society to recognise that. But I absolutely agree with you – it shouldn’t just be 18-year-olds, but you have to start somewhere.”
Andy Gregory26 May 2024 07:42
Opinion | Sunak hopes TV debates can change his fortunes – they might just make matters worse
The Independent’s chief political commentator John Rentoul writes:
The plot twist has been postponed again. Those of us waiting for the election narrative to change are still waiting. I wrote a couple of months ago that Labour would have a wobble before the election.
Party loyalists disapproved of my suggestion that there was bound to be at least one episode of panic at Labour HQ before election day, because the opinion polls were likely to narrow, either as a result of random variation or of events. They can be pleased that it hasn’t happened yet. If there is a Labour wobble, it will now happen during the campaign itself …
But it may not be the TV debates that do it. Sunak’s brilliance in debate may be his undoing. He was considered to have done badly in the TV debates in the Tory leadership election two years ago. He took Liz Truss’s arguments apart in ways that were richly vindicated by later events, but at the time he was given bad reviews for patronising her, talking over her and generally being an arrogant know-it-all.
The thing about a plot twist is that it should not be in a direction that the audience expects. Every time I thought that the narrative may be about to change, it got worse for Sunak instead.
You can read the full piece here:
Andy Gregory26 May 2024 07:24
Labour has been on a charm offensive with the City – but will it work?
Rishi Sunak had become increasingly frustrated as the economic outlook improved but he and his ministers received little credit.
It was this that made up his mind to go to the country. There seemed little point in waiting for things to get better (to quote the well-worn Labour song). They might, they might not.
He must hope that while voters did not show their appreciation in the recent local elections, they will do so in the Big One. While the Tories were punished in the council ballots, he could derive encouragement that Labour’s vote was soft: Tory defectors did not switch en masse to Keir Starmer’s party.
Read the full article here:
Holly Evans26 May 2024 06:30
Sunak asked if he caught pneumonia after rainy general election speech
Sunak asked if he caught pneumonia after rainy general election speech
Rishi Sunak shared a joke with constituents in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, over his general election speech that was dampened by pouring rain. The prime minister was told by one constituent that she thought he’d “be in bed with pneumonia” as he met local ex-servicemen at one of their regular Saturday breakfast meetings. At the Buck Inn, a Wetherspoons pub, Vicky Rudd, sat next to her husband Doug, from Richmond British Legion, asked Mr Sunak about his health. “No pneumonia yet, my suit on the other hand… I’m not quite sure what state it will be in when I get back down to London,” the PM replied.
Holly Evans26 May 2024 06:00
Sunak hopes TV debates can change his fortunes – they might just make matters worse
The prime minister thinks he can show up Keir Starmer in a head-to-head confrontation, but so far this campaign has not gone to plan, writes John Rentoul
Read the full article here:
Holly Evans26 May 2024 05:30
Is Sunak’s election campaign the worst in history?
He is soaked in Downing Street on his launch, drowned out by triumphant Blair’s anthem, his MPs are fleeing the battlefield and he visits a Titanic museum. When you think things cannot get worse for Rishi Sunak, they do. Is this the worst start to an election campaign in history?
Those with a distant memory can recall Michael Foot’s 1983 election campaign for Labour with the manifesto described by the late Gerald Kaufman as “the longest suicide note in history”.
But what went down in folklore as the worst ever election campaign – one which nearly saw the destruction of Labour – may have found its match in catastrophic miscalculations and farce.
Read the full analysis from our political editor David Maddox here:
Holly Evans26 May 2024 05:00
Lib Dems respond to national service pledge
Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Richard Foord MP said: “If the Conservatives were serious about defence, they would reverse their damaging cuts to our world class professional armed forces, instead of decimating them, with swingeing cuts to the number of our regular service personnel.
“Our armed forces were once the envy of the world. This Conservative government has cut troop numbers and is planning more cuts to the size of the Army.
“This would be far better spent reversing Conservative cuts to troop numbers.”
Holly Evans26 May 2024 04:00
Number of migrants passes 10,000 in blow for Rishi Sunak
More than 10,000 migrants are thought to have arrived in the UK so far this year after crossing the Channel, in a blow to the prime minister who has made “stopping the boats” a flagship promise.
Migrants, including several children, were brought ashore in Dover, Kent, on Friday.
As of Thursday, 9,882 people had made the journey from France this year, according to provisional Home Office figures.
This is up 35% on the number recorded this time last year (7,297) and 6% higher than the same point in 2022 (9,326), according to PA news agency analysis of the data.
The latest arrivals suggest at least around 130 migrants arrived in the UK on Friday, indicating the number crossing the Channel for 2024 to date has hit 10,000, and more were seen making the journey as the day continued.
Holly Evans26 May 2024 03:30
Starmer defends New Deal ‘rebrand’ after union backlash
Sir Keir Starmer has defended Labour’s decision to rebrand its package of workers’ rights pledges following a backlash from one of the UK’s biggest trade unions.
The party leader denied he was weakening policies on areas like zero-hours contracts, parental leave and sick pay after Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the plans had “more holes than Swiss cheese”.
It comes after the latest flare-up in a row over Labour’s New Deal for Working People, following reports it would go through a formal consultation process with businesses – potentially delaying or toning down the pledges.
Read the full article here:
Holly Evans26 May 2024 03:00
Jeremy Corbyn’s constituents give views on re-election campaign as independent
Jeremy Corbyn’s constituents give views on re-election campaign
Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington North constituents have given their views on their MP after he announced he would stand as an independent candidate in the general election. The former Labour leader was suspended by the party in 2020 after he refused to fully accept the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s findings that the party broke equality law when he was in charge. Mr Corbyn has now been banished from the party after announcing he will stand as an independent. Labour has selected Praful Nargund to stand against Mr Corbyn, who has held the seat for more than 40 years.
Holly Evans26 May 2024 02:30