Tories and Labour go to battle on TikTok

The digital election battle is heating up. Just a few days ago the Labour party joined TikTok, the social media app. Today the Conservatives have followed suit. The Tories have launched on the app this Sunday with a post from Rishi Sunak heralding his new election policy: mandatory national service.

In the first video on the app, Sunak said:

‘Hi TikTok, sorry to be breaking into your politics-free feed – but I’m making a big announcement today and I’m told that a lot of you already have some views on it. So, first thing, no – I’m not sending everyone to go and join the army. What I am doing is proposing a bold new model of national service for 18-year-olds’.

@ukconservatives This will change lives #nationalservice #generalelection #uk #rishisunak ♬ original sound – Conservatives

Now given the polling suggests many younger people won’t be fans of the policy, it’s an interesting choice to launch the account now. Yet figures at CCHQ were keen to point out on Sunday that this video had gained more views than all of Labour’s 20 TikTok videos combined. The Tories’ first video has over one million views alone. However, Labour’s videos making fun of the policy are also doing well and have since overtaken – with one likening Sunak to Lord Farquaad from Shrek reaching 1.6m views. The Conservatives are on over 10,000 followers whereas Labour are on 29,000. However, it is worth pointing out that the UK party miles ahead of both is Reform, on 112,000 followers.

@uklabour Rishi Sunak announcing national service #ukelection #ukpolitics #generalelection #toriesout #nationalservice ♬ original sound – UKLabour

In this election, the digital battlefield will be more important than in any previous national vote, with the number of people watching television falling and direct mail being viewed as costly for the parties. Social media is viewed as a key way to reach both young and disaffected voters. It’s notable that Labour has expanded its digital operation in the last year to be more agile and more targeted.

But both Starmer and Sunak will face a similar challenge. Some of the politicians who do best on the platform – which is one of the most popular sources of news in the UK – are strident, dynamic and straight-talking. Take the right-wing populist Javier Milei who used TikTok for his successful campaign for the Argentinian presidency. In last year’s New Zealand election, the more straight down the line Chris Luxon, the National leader, used the platform well – but he was running as the ‘change’ candidate. Still, there is a clear electoral prize for whichever leader can make the platform work to their advantage.

Young people are right to resent national service

Young Britons like me have already done our fair share of national service. For two gruelling years, we sacrificed the best years of our lives to protect the elderly from Covid, dutifully abiding by each arbitrary restriction on our freedoms. Parties were cancelled, concerts were postponed, and evenings were spent alone, all in the name of national solidarity. Like most of my peers, my memories of university life will forever be tarnished by lockdowns, social distancing, and Zoom lectures.

Even now Covid is over we still face sky-high house prices, crippling student debt, and a historically high tax burden, which squeezes working-age people in order to fund the ever-increasing cost of social care and the state pension. For our troubles, we are rewarded with endless columns from ageing commentators about how we are all lazy, petulant snowflakes. Our institutions preach about the inherent sinfulness of Britain and its past, while our politicians fail to rescue us from our impending national decline. 

Last night, the Conservatives announced that if elected they will seek to reintroduce national service for 18-year-olds. Young people will either be able to apply for the armed forces or give up one weekend a month to work for the fire service, NHS or other public services. 

The words ‘national service’ may evoke nostalgia about the ‘good old days’ for some. When it was last in place, from 1947 until 1960, we are told it gave young people discipline, and helped to bring the country together by forcing people of different backgrounds to meet and mix. 

But in reality these new plans would only serve to build resentment amongst a generation of younger people who feel that they have been consistently let down by their government. Unlike the disciplined, regimented military obligation of the 1950s, this modern iteration of national service would look more like a glorified National Citizen Service, with conscripts deployed to support municipal busywork or plug gaps in our ailing social care system. 

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As a country, we have given young people little to be proud of. Is it any wonder that my generation isn’t racing down to the recruitment centre? 

The idea that our country’s decline in social cohesion can be fixed by forcing young people into a year of meaningless work is ludicrous. For decades, the British state has proven exceptionally ineffectual at building social cohesion, with a storied legacy of cringeworthy ‘hug a hoodie’ style initiatives. This policy is just the latest madcap idea from a political class which is increasingly out of touch.

As Edmund Burke understood so well, society is predicated upon an intergenerational contract, which balances rights and responsibilities at different life stages. If we want young people to step up and take responsibility, we must also make sure that Britain is a country in which they can prosper and put down roots. Give working-age people homeownership, support to start a family, and a safe, clean public realm, and you’ll also be giving them something to fight for. 

It is these conditions, not Whitehall bureaucracy, which creates the kind of vibrant civil society that has social cohesion and intergenerational harmony. Working-age people are far less likely to be resentful of granny if they are able to properly enjoy the fruits of their labour. Instead of trying to instil patriotism through sharp-tongued sergeant majors, the Conservatives should be trying to turn Britain into a country that young people can genuinely be proud of. 

Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the cynical electoral politics in all of this. The idea of instating some form of national service is popular, particularly amongst the older, Reform-leaning voters that Sunak is desperately attempting to court. Still, as early polls show that the Conservative party is less popular amongst voters under-40 than the Greens, it’s high time that it showed some love to the younger voters who have abandoned the party in droves. Voters are for life, not just for the general election, and there’s no time like the present to start rebuilding the Conservative coalition around the kind of young, ambitious professionals who once propelled Thatcher into government. 

Instead of subjecting Britain’s young to state-sanctioned litter-picking and lectures on ‘British Values’ from moustachioed drill sergeants, Sunak should be working to address our unsustainable intergenerational imbalance. As long as the British state continues to punish young people in this country, young people will continue to be apathetic towards the British state – and deservedly so. 

Will Labour raise taxes?

What is Labour’s tax-and-spend agenda? This is an outstanding question the party needs to answer before polling day – and Labour seems to know it. That is presumably why shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves sat in the BBC One hot seat on the first Sunday of the election campaign. ‘I totally agree I have to show the sums add up’ Reeves told Laura Kuenssberg this morning. 

But what will be done to make that possible: higher taxes, more borrowing, or a reduction in spending? Unsurprisingly, Reeves did not want to make firm commitments in most of these areas. The shadow chancellor did commit though once again to not raising certain taxes. ‘We certainly won’t be increasing income tax or National Insurance,’ Reeves told Kuenssberg. (Labour has also previously stated that it will not bring in a wealth tax, nor will it further raise corporation tax in its first term, though neither specific tax was mentioned today.) Of course this leaves the door open for countless other tax hikes – ones which go much further than Labour’s current proposals, such as adding VAT to private school fees and extending the windfall tax on energy.

It seems something will have to give, as Reeves firmly rejected the current government’s strategy of making spending cuts in the next parliament to make the numbers add up. After Jeremy Hunt’s last Budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculated that unprotected departments could be facing cuts worth up to £20 billion a year across the board by 2028-29. How exactly would Labour tackle this spending black hole?

‘I don’t want to make any cuts to public spending’, Reeves insisted this morning. ‘There’s not going to be a return to austerity under a Labour government.’ This was a rejection of the idea of spending cuts, but it was by no means a promise not to implement them. Her answer instead, throughout the interview, was to ‘grow our economy’. It’s a point that is equal parts true and meaningless: there is no way the National Health Service or the state pension can be sustained without boosting growth long-term, but as Liz Truss learned the hard way, simply talking about the benefits of growth is no substitute for the policies that deliver it.

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This tax and spend question is further complicated by Keir Starmer’s own comments this week. When pressed by Times Radio on Friday on how he will square the promise of no further tax rises and no further spending cuts, the Labour leader said ‘where there are tax rises, we have set out what they will be and what the money will be spent on.’ This implies that it’s the pledges Labour has already made – none of which are expected to raise a large amount of revenue – which will have to account for the additional money coming into the Treasury. Were this to be the case, we should not expect to see any major spending promises in Labour’s manifesto – the cash simply won’t be there to fund it. It also suggests that contentious areas for the party – public sector pay, for example, or more money promised for the NHS alongside reform – may become even more difficult to manage.

Still, Starmer’s comments are also somewhat vague. Is he talking about the pledges Labour has already made, or ones we are about to discover in the party’s manifesto? Either way, this weekend has shone a bit of light on what a tricky area fiscal policy still is for Labour. The party has been politically clever to avoid making any big tax or spending promises during the past few years – nothing major pledged means relatively minor scrutiny. But with Labour so close to power, that is no longer a serious option. Starmer and Reeves know they must kill any suggestions of a tax raid – as that would undoubtedly spook the public – but they can’t realistically rule out major tax rises given they want to spend more than Rishi Sunak.

There is one potential revenue raiser that has not been fully teased out: borrowing. The idea was quickly batted away this morning as Reeves lamented the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio nearing 100 per cent, while promising to stick to ‘tough spending rules’ if she found herself in the Treasury. 

It would be easy to get the impression from this that Labour has ruled out borrowing more completely. But as I say in the Daily Telegraph this weekend, no such assumption should be made. The current fiscal rule used by the Tories – that debt as a percentage of GDP must be falling on a five-year, rolling basis – is a ridiculously loose rule that allows debt to keep spiraling. So long as the next government promises every year that in another five years’ time it will make some tough decisions, ministers can keep spending in the meantime, with no serious plans to get levels of public debt falling.

This is how Hunt has managed to deliver his employee National Insurance tax cuts – as well as more funding for the NHS and a renewed commitment to the pension triple lock – and still make the numbers add up. No doubt Reeves will be using the same mechanism to make good on Labour’s promises. It is not ‘tough’ or restrictive what Labour may inherit from the Tories: it is a free pass to spend.

Sunday shows round-up: Farage brands national service plan ‘a joke’

Today saw the first set of Sunday shows since the election was called on Wednesday. Rachel Reeves was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg about Labour’s fiscal plans if they win power on 4 July. The Shadow Chancellor said ‘We won’t increase income tax or National Insurance’ but refused to rule out some public spending cuts as she vowed that there ‘will not be a return to austerity’ under a Labour government. Reeves also refused to put a timetable on raising defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, though she said the party supported getting there eventually.

Cleverly rules out jail for national service refuseniks

The big announcement of the day is the Conservatives’ plan to introduce a new form of national service. The Home Secretary James Cleverly confirmed that no-one who refused the scheme would go to jail in his interview with Sky. He said that those taking part in the military option will be remunerated – but those who do weekend volunteering will not get any payment.

Farage: national service announcement is ‘a joke’

Two days after ruling out a return as a Reform candidate, Nigel Farage was up on Camilla Tominey’s show to criticise the Tories’ announcement. While supporting the principle of a return to national service, the former MEP said that the scheme was unworkable, given the hollowed-out state of the British Armed Forces. Describing the policy as a ‘joke’, Farage attacked the Tories’ record on defence.

Tobias Ellwood: ‘1930s feel to the world’ means we need national service

Speaking to LBC, the former chairman of the Defence Select Committee welcomed his party’s plans today for national service. Ellwood claimed that in these uncertain times, such a scheme is ‘a sober recognition, indeed a powerful reminder of the increasingly grim chapter in our history that we’ve entered, that it is not dissimilar to the late 1930s.’ He added that it is ‘simply not possible to retain our standing armed force at such high readiness, so there must be an all society approach.’

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Michael Portillo: MPs quitting are ‘discourteous’ to avoid their own ‘Portillo moment’

Portillo criticised ‘ungrateful’ Michael Gove and other Tories who have stood down at the last minute for using their constituencies ‘like a public convenience.’ He said: ‘Members of Parliament got elected because they have constituency associations that work very hard for them… it is the most profound discourtesy to give up your seat when the election’s announced. If you want to leave, you should give six months or 12 months notice.’

Liz Kendall ducks question on private school closures

Liz Kendall was asked on GB News about her party’s plans to put VAT on private school fees. Host Camilla Tominey pointed to a story in today’s Sunday Telegraph which claims that one school has already closed down ahead of Labour’s likely election and enactment of this policy. Tominey cited the IFS whose analysis suggests that 40,000 children could now leave their independent schools and move into the ‘overstretched’ state state as a consequence of VAT on fees. Kendall suggested that parents would be able to absorb the costs, as they have done on recent fee hikes.

This national service plan is a patronising gimmick

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 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.

It won’t work in my view. This is not because there is a lack of public appetite for boosting social solidarity via such impositions upon our increasingly ‘every man for himself’ modern era, but because Sunak’s overall political programme has been rumbled as not real.

The Prime Minister asked to be judged by voters on five key commitments – halving inflation, restoring a decent rate of economic growth, cutting public debt, slashing NHS waiting times and stopping the boats. Yet he called an election before he needed to with only the first of those tasks executed. The final pledge – so important to the culturally conservative voters that the Tories have lost – is going backwards at a rate of knots with 10,000 illegal arrivals this year already, a benchmark reached in record time.

Alongside these failures, Sunak has by dissolving parliament now also pulled the plug on another totemic policy aimed at young people – the rolling smoking ban that was to follow 18-year-olds through their lives. And he has reminded us that the other idea he chose as route to a personal legacy – a ten-year-plan to reform A-levels – was always shot through with a will-o’-the-wisp quality given his own limited shelf-life.

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His resort to the old right-wing rallying cry of ‘bring back national service’ echoes the final move of his disastrous cabinet reshuffle last autumn – making the GB News presenter Esther McVey his ‘minister for common sense’. It is a gimmick from a posh liberal who thinks the plebs can be won over with eye-catching superficiality because they are too dim to notice that the important decisions are all going in the other direction.

Summoning up the spirit of Sir John Junor and Alf Garnett is hardly an effective counterweight to telling police to stop arresting so many criminals because the jails are overflowing or presiding over yet another year of recklessly excessive immigration that trashes social cohesion. Or indeed taking people for fools when it comes to the prospects of his flagship Rwanda removals plan.

Sunak has become a Potemkin premier and we are being given a highly manipulated tour of his provinces, driven in a carriage past hastily-created facades of prosperity or progress. National insurance or inheritance tax to be abolished, every illegal migrant to be removed – these are vistas that will only convince the truly hard of thinking.

And now, suddenly, it is time for national service lads. It is increasingly tempting to think that the greatest punishment we could administer to Mr Sunak would be to leave him in situ, doomed to future ignominy as flashy idea after flashy idea topples into the dust. But we would not be so cruel.

James Cleverly: no one will go to jail over national service

Well, Rishi Sunak’s new flagship policy of reintroducing national service has certainly gone off with a bang this morning. The policy, announced last night, would see 18-year-olds given the option of applying for a military post, or spending one weekend every month for a year working for the fire services, police, the NHS, or local charities. According to the Conservative party the scheme will be mandatory. 

What happens though if young people refuse to take part? It seemed initially at least the Tories were feeling bullish about cracking down on any absconding youths, with a leaked internal Q&A from the Conservatives suggesting that the party wasn’t ruling out arresting 18-year-olds dodging their civic duty. 

Home Secretary James Cleverly dampened down those suggestions though when he appeared on Sky News this morning. Asked what will happen to young people who refuse to take part, Cleverly confirmed that there would be ‘no criminal sanctions’, with ‘no one going to jail over this’. He went on to argue that in Scandinavia there had been widespread take-up for similar schemes, but ‘we are going to compel people to do it’. 

Mr S has to wonder though how young people will be compelled to do mandatory ‘voluntary’ service if there’s no legal requirement to do so. Perhaps the first job of this new batch of army recruits will be hunting down anyone who is AWOL?

Watch here:

"No one's going to jail over this."

Home Secretary @JamesCleverly says the Tories' mandatory National Service plans are "about building a network across society" and also confirms volunteering won't be paid.#TrevorPhillips https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF

📺 Sky 501 / YouTube pic.twitter.com/8JnJ3YedN4

— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 26, 2024

Sunak’s national service may end up backfiring

The idea of bringing back national service has been kicking around British politics for about five times longer than the policy itself lasted. Mandatory conscription was introduced by the Attlee government and dismantled gradually from 1957 to 1963. Those old enough to have experienced it will now be in their mid-80s. Following Rishi Sunak’s announcement last night, the Tories might introduce it to a new generation. 

Though the PM’s main attack line on Starmer is his lack of plan, the Conservative party’s national service suggestion is itself quite vague. Sunak is suggesting that a Royal Commission will flesh out the policy, a classical political move to gloss over the details of a flashy announcement. A germ of an idea is there though. Mandatory service for all 18-year-olds is being proposed, with either a year in the military or 25 days volunteering in some sort of community service. 

The political thinking here is straightforward. The idea of national service has remained popular, especially with those who never had to do it themselves. Polling over the years suggests around 40 per cent of the country might support it. The support is usually strongest among the sort of retirees where the Tories find their base, and where they see this election as a battle with Reform. Announcing this now is a clear signal that this is the Tory strategy for the next six weeks. 

Individually popular policies, however, make a poor election campaign. When electing a government people tend to think in the round. Being stopped by a pollster and asked if something is a good idea is different from voting for it. An election focuses minds on the broader context, not just a grab-bag idea. Indeed, this was the great downfall of the Corbynites – individual policies had appeal, but presented together by a polarising politician they added up to a losing platform. 

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This is partly because, like Brexit, even when something is popular, people have different ideas about the implementation. The unfurnished details of Sunak’s conscription plan could detract from its popularity. Quite rightly we might wonder how the forces would cope with an annual intake equivalent to about 10 per cent of its total strength. Part of the reason the first round of national service was dismantled was that the army didn’t want to spend time training fresh troops who’d disappear after a year. It’s hard to see how today’s smaller, more technically complex forces would deal with the same challenge. 

The same issue is true of the public services. Volunteering is a great thing which many charities and organisations relish. Finding jobs for a few enthusiasts is very different though from having to deal with those press-ganged into being there. In the NHS and other organisations, scarce resources would have to be used to manage bored and recalcitrant recruits. It opens the door for Labour attacks too on how the Tory government has already impacted the armed forces and public services. 

In a broader campaign, there are other pitfalls too. While national service might bring back some Reform voters to the Tory fold, elsewhere it will push them away. Part of the problem the Tories have is that they are now increasingly seen as the party of the old. Trapped in a symbiotic, perhaps even parasitic, relationship with voters over 60, the party pitches more policies at retirees while becoming more dependent on their votes. National service feels like something in this vein. 

Understandably, enthusiasm for the idea wanes the closer you are in age to the people who have to do it. The Tories are already in an existential struggle with these groups. In 1997, more than a quarter of under-24s voted Tory, even when the party faced a huge defeat. On the latest polling support from that age group is around 7 per cent. Indeed, the party is doing less well with 50- to 64-year-olds than it did in 1997. Taken alongside other policy areas – the triple lock, house prices, and Brexit – the Tory party looks like an organisation that has lost touch with the young. This will skew how the national service gambit is seen. 

Perceptions around policy matters. On the NHS, say, the public will think kindlier of a Labour reform package than a Tory one, even if it did the same thing. When voters see you as the political wing of the OAPs, this is how national service will be viewed. As much as you try to dress it as a way for young people to gain skills, or to bolster the armed forces in an uncertain world, for many it will just be seen as a cruel way of trying to appeal to retirees. This could further motivate the younger vote against the Tories, sending up turnout and worsening their defeat. It will also make it harder to win those voters back in future elections. 

For much of Sunak’s term as PM, we have seen this approach to policy. Things are thrown out in isolation – free chess boards, compulsory maths to the age of 18 – that perhaps might be popular, yet come together to form an unconvincing whole. A half-formed national service plan fits this mould, and while it might fire up a few older voters, it feels unlikely to greatly swing the political dial. 

The real issue this campaign has is that after 14 years, the Tory party feels tired and chaotic. In many quarters it was viewed as incompetent and tetchy. Policies that poll well without the Tories attached will look very different through this lens. National service is one of those policies – at best it might shore up the core vote, but it is far from election-winning. Instead, it looks like a desperate move from a party struggling to think of things to offer. 

Could Jeremy Corbyn become a left-wing Nigel Farage?

Why can’t Jeremy Corbyn be a left-wing Farage? Why can’t he threaten Labour as Ukip and its successor parties threatened and continue to threaten the Tories? There is a gap in the market for a party to the left of Labour, and Corbyn seems just the man to fill it. 

Those of us who intensely disliked his leadership of the Labour party disliked most of all the gormless personality cult which surrounded him and did so much to destroy the left’s claim to possess a sceptical intelligence. But there is no doubt that, if you want to build a new movement, having tens of thousands, and in all likelihood hundreds of thousands, of devotees is a great place to start.

Nor will many on the British left be over-concerned that Corbyn is out of Labour because he refused to apologise for presiding over one of the worst moments in Labour history. The Equality and Human Rights Commission said Labour was responsible for ‘unlawful’ antisemitic discrimination on Corbyn’s watch. Corbyn ducked responsibility by saying that the racism had been ‘dramatically overstated’ by his opponents.

The Gaza conflict has given many on the left licence to stop caring about anti-Jewish racism, assuming, that is, they cared in the first place. Meanwhile Keir Starmer’s decision to offer a blank cheque to Benjamin Netanyahu, of all people, has infuriated white left-wing and Muslim opinion and brought mass protests and mass resignations from Labour.

The material for a new movement is there. You can see it raging on the streets of London most weekends. Why not unite Corbyn and his supporters, the Green party, George Galloway and his Muslim backers, and the remnants of the various Trotskyist and Stalinist parties in a coherent left-wing movement? It could work just as well as Ukip worked. And yet when Corbyn announced he would stand against Labour in Islington North on Friday, he said he would stand alone as an independent. There was no new movement and no new party.

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I live in Islington and the Labour candidate Praful Nargund is not well known. He runs private IVF clinics, and the left will get him for that. But he’s also a brave man. Anyone who stands against Corbyn will face the libels and attacks of his supporters. Like so many saints before him, Corbyn inspires cruelty.

One prominent local Labour figure told me a Corbyn supporter had said: ‘I would deserve everything I got if I ran against Jeremy’. Her partner and children said she should not put them through it. The nastiness would not be over when the election was over: ‘We’d have to live in the constituency afterwards and there would be bitter recriminations.’ It will be a gruesome fight and no one wants to predict the winner. But it will be a fight between Corbyn and Labour. Not between Labour and a movement to its left.

For all the apparent affinity with Corbyn, the Green party is running a candidate against him in Islington North. It won’t campaign hard, I am told, but it won’t stand aside either. A big reason why left-wing unity is impossible is that Greens have little connection to left-wing history. However radical their positions can appear, they are not socialists. Working-class trade unionists will never ally easily with a party that wants to close nuclear and gas power stations and is opposed to economic growth. 

Sheridan Kates, the Green candidate fighting Corbyn in Islington North, is explicit about the gulf between the Labour movement that was born to fight for the industrial working class, and a green movement born to fight against the despoliation of the planet. He denounces ‘economic plans coming from the incoming Labour shadow government [that] are based on continued economic growth, which widens inequality and harms our planet’.  

Pretty much everyone on the left, from Karl Marx onwards, has believed economic growth opened up the possibility to remove or at least ameliorate inequality. The Greens do not. The tension can be seen in the seats where the Greens are competitive. They do well in the bourgeois left areas of Brighton and Bristol rather than the old industrial regions. Tellingly, they are also putting down roots in rural England. The Greens hope to take north Herefordshire and the new Waveney Valley constituency in East Anglia, which includes Beccles and Diss, towns that are far from working-class Britain.

They reject Labour claims that they do well in the soft south by selling out the young and becoming a nimby party. Maybe they are telling the truth. But I wonder for how long they will have much choice in the matter. Home county politicians do not prosper by building homes, after all.

Meanwhile the white, far left’s alliance with British Islam, and on occasion radical Islam, is as much a curse as a blessing. On the one hand it can bring it votes – George Galloway took Rochdale earlier this year – on the other hand, there are huge dangers. Let me explain them with a question: would it be a good idea for Corbyn to invite Galloway to campaign in Islington on his behalf?

To the anger of many on the left, Galloway has followed through on the logic of appealing to Muslim conservatives by saying he didn’t want children to be taught ‘that gay relationships are exactly the same and as normal as a mum, a dad and kids’. One can mock leftists who were willing to overlook Galloway’s support for dictatorships but that does not mean that their anger is not real, and if Corbyn brings in Galloway he will do his cause no good at all.

The truth is that the far left had its one shot at power when Corbyn won the Labour leadership. Under first past the post, you are far better off trying to take over one of the two main parties than campaigning as outsiders – as the Brexit-backing right found when it took over the Conservatives. My guess is that Corbyn’s supporters who are still in Labour won’t risk expulsion by coming to Islington to fight for their old leader. They will stay and dream of one day capturing Labour as Corbyn did.

Why can’t Jeremy Corbyn lead a new movement? Because the Greens go their own way. Because the tensions in the alliance between white progressives and Muslim conservatives are too great. And because, well, of Jeremy Corbyn’s success in snatching the Labour leadership. Keir Starmer is a truly lucky politician. He’s lucky that the Conservative and Scottish National parties have fallen apart just when he needed them to, and lucky that the far left cannot unite. He’s going to be in power for a long, long time.

Are Sinn Fein heading for an election triumph?

Bankrupt councils, the imminent collapse of Thames Water, prison overcrowding and a row with unions over public sector pay are some of the unwelcome prospects facing Keir Starmer if he wins the election. Sue Gray, the Labour leader’s chief of staff, has compiled a so-called ‘shit list’ of such things which could derail any potential Labour government in the early days of its tenure in Downing Street. There’s another problem to add to the list: the prospect of Sinn Fein triumphing in Northern Ireland and becoming the Province’s largest party at Westminster.

A shambolic DUP campaign could easily end up handing Sinn Fein victory. If the DUP haemorrhage enough votes to other unionist parties then tight seats like East Belfast or South Antrim could slip from the party’s grasp to Alliance or the Ulster Unionists respectively. There would only be one winner from this outcome: Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein could also defenestrate the two sitting SDLP MPs Colum Eastwood and Claire Hanna, though under Eastwood’s leadership it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between the tone and tenor of the so-called moderate nationalists of the SDLP and Sinn Fein.

These scenarios would hand most of Northern Ireland’s 18 Westminster seats to Sinn Fein, a party that continues to refuse to take up its seats in the Commons. A Sinn Fein victory would send those who subscribe to the march of history thesis around Northern Irish politics into overdrive; the nationalist machine will ratchet up its demands for what it is euphemistically branding as a ‘conversation’ about the need for a ‘new Ireland’. 

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The head first rush towards a demand for a border poll is a typical Irish nationalist reflex, often ignorant of process, nuance and the fact most polling suggests it is not the done thing many of them think it is. There is a difference between Sinn Fein’s electoral might and how that translates to a referendum.

Nevertheless, it poses an interesting challenge for Starmer and co, especially as they wrap themselves in the Union Flag in the campaign. Working on the assumption that a sizeable Labour victory in Scotland silences the independence issue there for the foreseeable, Northern Ireland will be the main source of constitutional angst.

Labour does not stand candidates in Northern Ireland and over the years plenty of its MPs and members have been inherently sympathetic to the causes of Irish nationalism and indeed, republicanism. The Labour Party Irish Society – incidentally chaired by Sue Gray’s son, Liam Conlon – supports the stance of not standing candidates there, and has stressed the need for the party to be an ‘honest broker’ in Northern Irish politics.

Starmer himself said he would campaign to keep Northern Ireland in the UK, a profession of unionism which is somewhat askance with the more lukewarm stance of a considerable chunk of his party.

The early election poses questions for Northern Ireland, especially how a recently rebooted and tentatively cohesive Stormont will cope with a full-blooded campaign where the unionist parties are likely to rehash their internal disputes over the Irish Sea border. However, the ingrained ambivalence in Labour beyond Starmer towards Ulster unionism will not have gone unnoticed amongst those who want to push the envelope around a border poll.

While it will be a slow burner, a prolonged period of Labour rule is not unhelpful to those who view Northern Ireland’s departure from the UK as their end goal. Those who care about the integrity of the country need to be ready to respond.

Sam Altman is not evil

It’s a classic trajectory. You start as a likeable and geeky tech tyro, you morph into a squillionaire with disagreeable habits, and somewhere on the way you become loathed by large sections of the population. 

It happened to Bill Gates – remember when he was an amiable nerd making glitchy but intriguing software? Now he is a mogul apparently injecting us with nanobots. Look at the career of Elon Musk, once a move-and-break-things hero sending amazing jets into the sky. Now he’s the brooding Trumpite Satan, who has supposedly turned Twitter into a fascist hellhole. Steve Jobs of Apple nearly went through the same process, but avoided it by the devious means of dying too young.

Now the same evolution seems to be happening to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Except it is happening to him much faster than any of the other fallen tech titans, which is fitting, given that he works in AI, an industry where everything is turned up to 11 and ‘exponential’ is expected.

It’s hard to remember that OpenAI has only existed for nine years. Yes, less than a decade; and it was born when Sam Altman was just 30. As little as three years ago it was still barely known outside techie circles. Now, with the progressive unveiling of GPTs 2, 3, 4, and o, and the potentially epochal 5 on the way, it is a company worth $80 billion (at least). It has giants like Google wondering if they are doomed, and it has the rest of the world wondering if humanity itself is imperilled. 

What, then, are the charges against Altman, its CEO?  Some of them are partly justified. Elon Musk, for instance, was an early founder of OpenAI and he says the original intent was to make AI that would be freely available, to much of the world – hence the name of the company. 

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Much of that has not happened. The new OpenAI guards its secrets carefully, like a dragon sitting atop The Precious. Similarly, rumours leak out of the company’s San Francisco HQ the same way they slipped out of the old Soviet Kremlin. 

OpenAI even suffers coups and countercoups – Altman was briefly deposed late last year, in a bizarre rebellion by board members, but then he was reinstalled a couple of days later after a factory floor uprising. It is difficult to know if this was because they genuinely liked their leader, or because they were worried about their stock options. Perhaps both?

Another allegation against Altman is that he is neglecting the other foundational principle of OpenAI. The idea was, in those days, that OpenAI should create ‘safe and ethical’ artificial intelligence. The confidence that this is happening has been undermined by the recent departure of so many senior OpenAI staffers dedicated to this side of development (known as ‘alignment’ – as we try to align the machines with human values, and make sure they don’t turn us into paperclips). The most notable departure was alignment bigwig Ilya Sutskever, who was – notably – also involved in the failed putsch.

Finally, the charge sheet against Sam Altman is one of basic ineptitude, in various ways. For instance, he is prone to making jejune statements on social media. At one point he joked on Reddit that ‘AGI has been developed internally’ – referencing an AI in-joke. It may have been a joke, but the advent of AGI is roughly as important as intelligent aliens landing in Regent’s Park, so it’s probably not something you should joke about.

Altman exhibited a similar cackhandedness in recent weeks with the Scarlett Johansson brouhaha. For those that need updating: OpenAI have just developed a new talking-and-seeing AI (GPT4o). It seems they wanted to actually give it ScarJo’s voice, as a hommage to her role as a seductive AI in the famously prescient 2013 movie Her. ScarJo said no, so they got another husky-voiced actress (it sounds to me like Rashida Jones, best known for TV sitcom Parks and Rec). And yet, a few days before launch, they apparently asked ScarJo again, got another No, at which point Altman decided to troll the world anyway, and announced the arrival of GPT4o with the simple word ‘Her’. 

All of which makes Altman look stalky and obsessed (though he is gay) and definitely quite foolish: the social media post was enough to provoke ScarJo into threatened legal action. OpenAI have had to withdraw the husky voice, for now.

Given all that, what can be said in defence of Altman?

First, and obviously: he’s a human being, helping to bring the greatest technological advance in human history to fruition. He is inevitably going to do things that annoy people; he will make errors. Second, yes OpenAI have closed up – but how else do you survive, and keep your amazing tech secret? Also, OpenAI have indeed gone corporate – teaming up with Microsoft, but AI development requires billions of dollars: where else do they get the money? 

As for safety and alignment, it is difficult to distinguish between disgruntled employees, and differing philosophies – and actual safety problems. It is notable that the biggest ethical AI screw-up to date has not come from OpenAI, it happened to Google, who made an AI so Woke (Gemini 1.5) it was dangerously mendacious, and was instantly taken down.

Finally, consider Altman’s personal position. Sure, he is a billionaire, with extremely nice wristwatches. But is his life that much fun? AI threatens to take away millions of jobs, and these are often jobs that people love: the arts and sciences. This will make people angry, and angry people do violent things. Altman himself has spoken of the ‘not zero’ chance of his being shot. In the last week he has admitted he can no longer eat in restaurants in his hometown, which makes him sad.

Ergo, I am inviting you to feel sorry for a billionaire. I know that is not easy, but even if you can’t pity him, then cut him some slack. He is fairly transparent: a democrat who does podcasts. Put it another way: yes, Californian techbros can be annoying, but I’d rather this world-changing research is done in Silicon Valley, as against Suzhou, or St Petersburg.

Sunak won’t be much help to the Scottish Tories

The first few days of this general election campaign have been characterised by Rishi Sunak’s dismal campaign management. From wet suits and sinking ships, his whistlestop tour of the four nations seemed more like a box-ticking exercise than anything else.

A prime minister from the Conservative and Unionist party must find some way to appeal to Northern Ireland and Scotland, the two parts of that union which in the longer term still represent a realistic flight risk. It was, however, hard not to reflect on Sunak’s irrelevance in these parts of the UK. Irrelevant in Northern Ireland because the party – making up less than 1 per cent of the vote – effectively does not participate. And the UK prime minister is irrelevant in Scotland because the battle ahead of his Scottish counterpart Douglas Ross and his party bears almost no resemblance to the fight facing Sunak.

In England, Sunak is attempting (almost certainly with futility) to fend off Labour across the north and the Midlands and the Lib Dems across London and the south, all the while looking over his shoulder at the vote share being eaten by Reform. Precisely none of these conditions exist in Scotland. The party’s six seats are all two-horse races with the SNP, and they need cooperation with Labour and Lib Dem voters, not conflict. Ross will shed no tears if Sunak decides to stay south of Hadrian’s Wall for the remainder of the campaign – he doesn’t need him, and indeed his presence will inevitably do more harm than good.

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The Scottish party is likely to come out of this election looking relatively healthy. The presumed collapse in seats in England is highly unlikely to be replicated in Scotland, purely because the substantial slip in Tory vote share (of 7-10 per cent in most polls) is aped by the slide of the SNP’s vote. So, while the loss of vote share would be devastating in a proportional representation election of the sort that the party will fight at Holyrood in 2026, in this first past the post election Ross’s seats are likely to remain blue. What’s more, he may even add to the tally. In addition to the six the Tories hold in the south and the north east, a relatively good night for the Tories and a fairly poor night for the SNP may put seats in Ayrshire, Perthshire and Moray into play. 

The key to any success the Tories have on 4 July is to augment the notion which has been the key to their success since 2014 – that independence is still a threat, and that unionist voters must vote for the party most likely to beat the SNP. This dynamic has been a silver bullet for the party at every election since 2016, when significant numbers of transactional unionist voters, not ideologically at home in the Tories, cross the Conservative box because they believed that was the best way to repel a second independence referendum. They did it again in 2017, 2019 and 2021. Success is dependent on voters in those 6-10 seats doing the same again.

Doing so would have more to do with Salmond and Sturgeon than with Sunak and Starmer. Understanding Scotland’s voting dynamic over the last decade requires an understanding of the mutually assured destruction which exists between the SNP and the Tories. To energise their vote, both need a second independence referendum to be on the table. The trouble is, reality has turned to myth. Privately, both leaderships know that a second referendum is a fantasy. With the SNP’s support tanking, with the Supreme Court having ruled that the Scottish parliament does not have authority to call a referendum, and with the Labour party ascending and promoting its own unionist credentials, there is in reality no route map whatsoever to a second referendum, far less a successful one. 

The fight for independence may not be completely dead – polling shows support for ‘Yes’ remains around 50 per cent – but at the moment it is at least cryogenically frozen. Anas Sarwar should say this to anyone who will listen, for he is the winner from the new reality. But for Douglas Ross, such an enlightenment would be a mortal wound.

The crisis in the NHS’s adult gender clinics

Hilary Cass’s review of children’s gender services revealed how young people are being badly let down by the NHS. The picture for adults awaiting treatment in NHS gender clinics is similarly bleak: the current system is broken – and thousands of people are stuck in limbo.

The waiting list at my old clinic – I am an alumnus of what used to be known as the ‘Charing Cross’ Gender Identity Clinic in London – has ballooned to 15,448 people. In March, just 35 first appointments were held at the Gender Identity Clinic. At that rate, it could take decades to clear the backlog, even as the referrals continue to flood in: that same month, over 250 referrals came through; in February, there were another 406. These are catastrophically large numbers for what is essentially a cottage industry made for different times.

It’s clear that the NHS is struggling to cope with the demand on its gender services. People are left languishing on waiting lists for too long, with their lives on pause. These patients might wait months, or even years, to be seen by a doctor who is a specialist in the field.

The current situation is in no one’s interests; it’s surely time for something radical to change. Perhaps the NHS should admit defeat and say gender identity clinics are not something it should fund. Medicine is, after all, about keeping healthy people fit and making sick people better. If, as some activists claim, that in the case of gender patients there is no mental health disorder to treat, then the work of the gender clinics sounds more like cosmetic treatment: it’s something we do to change the way other people perceive us. There is nothing wrong with that, but, perhaps, neither is there any need for the NHS to get involved where the focus is not so much on health as self-image.

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This is a debate that NHS bosses – and indeed the government – will shy away from. It’s a pity: someone needs to speak up for those who are in limbo. As NHS waiting lists grow, private providers have, of course, spotted an opportunity but they don’t come cheap. One clinic charges £360 for a 60-minute appointment. Other patients resort to buying hormones over the internet from overseas suppliers, perhaps with no medical oversight whatsoever. It’s a mess.

The situation in gender clinics hasn’t always been this dire, but even when I went through the system back in 2012-2016, the outlook for patients was fairly gloomy. My experience of adult gender services was distinctly underwhelming. I wanted two things from them. Firstly, a letter to my GP recommending the prescription of cross-sex hormones. That was secured after my second appointment. The second was a referral for gender reassignment surgery, which came at the fourth. But then I was one of the lucky ones: I knew what those who had gone before me had said, and I read from the same script. Three more half-hour appointments followed while I waited for that surgery, but there was little to talk about beyond anecdotes from work and perhaps the upcoming Test Match at Lords.

Then, as now, the difficult part was getting in front of the right doctor in the first place. In 2012, I had to first navigate the local mental health services. Back then, gender clinics did not take referrals directly from GPs, and certainly not self-referrals by patients.

If you made it through the obstacles, as I eventually did, there was one other issue to overcome: the knotty problem of who was going to foot the bill. Until 2013, gender medicine was commissioned to varying degrees by Specialised Commissioning Groups and Primary Care Trusts. With no central budget, getting the right treatment was something of a postcode lottery.

I was typical of the cohort who could navigate the local health services and say the right things to secure funding. I was middle-aged, well educated and established in life. Arguably the gatekeeping was unfair, but it limited numbers and – perhaps crucially – skewed the clientele to those who were able to take responsibility for what they were doing to their bodies and their lives.

During one appointment I asked my clinician why he had chosen to work in gender medicine. He explained that psychiatry generally concerned with managing ongoing conditions and patients could be on the books for life. Gender patients, on the other hand, were treated, discharged, and never seen again. The assumption was that this was one field in which psychiatrists could actually deliver a cure.

My contact – or indeed lack of it – since I underwent treatment certainly suggests that the NHS is focusing on delivering a ‘cure’ for trans people rather than their long-term post-op care. Charing Cross gender clinic discharged me in April 2016, two months after gender reassignment surgery. Since then, my ongoing care was largely left in the hands of my GP – a family doctor who knew me personally but was no gender expert. We pondered the results of blood tests together using a densely-worded 14-page booklet, Information about hormonal treatment for trans women. The aim, we read, was to ‘prevent osteoporosis (brittle bones), increase general well being and have a healthy heart’. The hormone dose should be adjusted so that blood oestradiol was in the range 400 to 600 picomoles per litre. What did that mean? At times, it is hard not to feel like a guinea pig.

As my years advanced beyond 50, my GP asked me about menopause – was this something that should happen to transwomen? I didn’t know, so she wrote to Charing Cross. The reply suggested that she just keep prescribing the hormones indefinitely; I’m still on them today. Is that wise? According to a more recent research paper, ‘given a lack of research on the management of gender affirming hormone therapy with aging, a shared decision-making approach is recommended to ensure individual goals are attained whilst minimising potential medical risks’. (My emphasis.) I’ll keep taking the pills, but only time will tell whether this is the right decision.

One of the things Cass’s review uncovered was questions over evidence for various treatments when it comes to children and young people. There’s clearly a problem too in the way that adult trans patients like me are treated. Without evidence, and in the absence of specialist knowledge, maybe we are merely sharing our ignorance. Since that reply from the clinic, I’ve heard nothing else from them. Unless they follow my columns in The Spectator and elsewhere, I could well be dead for all they know. Perhaps their silence is understandable: their waiting list is, after all, only growing longer.

Following a house move, I have a new GP, but my latest practice shares the concerns of the previous one and, worse, they have to catch up on my medical history. At a recent annual review, a clinician expressed their concern about managing my seemingly life-long hormone treatment: ‘We don’t know anything about this,’ I was told. It was suggested that I was referred back to the gender clinic. I laughed and pointed out that the odds were against me lasting another 37 years to get to the front of the queue. The practice I’m at is continuing to prescribe for now, but I worry about the future.

In many ways, I am fortunate: I am not stuck on a waiting list to finally be seen by a doctor. But plenty of people in the position I was in only a few years ago are not so lucky: they face a long wait to get to the front of the queue. Even then, their future looks far from certain.

So what should happen to the NHS’s adult gender clinics? Doctors working in them are clearly swamped and struggling to cope with demand. No one wins from this situation: perhaps it is time to ask the question as to whether the health service should be involved at all.

Sunak is right, Britain needs national service

The Tories have announced that, if re-elected, they will introduce national service. And it won’t be the miserable existence imposed on all young men in conscription years past. Instead, the Tories will invite 18-year-olds to compete for selective 12-month spots in areas including cyber security, logistics and civil response. That’s the model Norway has successfully been operating for over three decades. In addition, young people will be asked to volunteer on a monthly basis with the NHS, the fire service or charities looking after elderly and lonely people. Such service is a win-win: it’s beneficial for the young people involved in it, and even more importantly it helps make our country safer and more resilient.

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In 2019, I wrote a report arguing that the UK could learn from Norway’s competitive national service (which has in recent years been adapted by Sweden, and is also used in a somewhat different form in Denmark). This way, the UK could make military service a desirable proposition by making it highly selective. In Norway, where the armed forces test all 18-year-olds but select only some 17 per cent of them, being chosen for military service is like getting into Oxbridge.

This kind of hyper-competitive national service doesn’t just ensure that the armed forces get the best possible soldiers (and about one quarter of Norwegian conscripts opt to become professional soldiers). Unlike university admissions, it also allows youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds to shine in the admissions tests, because what matters is exclusively skill and aptitude. Princess Ingrid Alexandra, second in line to the Norwegian throne, is currently doing military service in an engineering battalion in the country’s north. She was assessed like every other candidate, and now shares sleeping quarters with young people from all sorts of backgrounds. The UK, I argued, could adapt the Norwegian model by expanding the national service beyond the armed forces to also include other essential services like cyber defence, fire and rescue, and the NHS. The Tories have adopted this idea (virtually) lock, stock and barrel.

The fact that the Tories have concluded that so-called ‘ordinary’ people would make a transformative contribution to the country’s security and resilience is, of course, hugely positive. Farewell to the tired binary debate pitting all-professional armed forces against conscription for all able-bodied men. There are different ways of involving the country’s teenagers in a way that benefits both them and the country, and by learning from allies the UK can save great amounts of time and effort.

Indeed, if the Tories win, the defence secretary and the chief of the defence staff would do well to quickly travel to Norway for a meeting with Defence Minister Bjørn Arild Gram and Chief of Defence General Eirik Kristoffersen. As commander of Norway’s special forces, Kristoffersen launched a pioneering all-female special forces unit – composed entirely of conscripts. Norway made its military service gender-neutral in 2016, thus dropping the odds of being selected from about one third to one sixth. (And yes, men and women compete against one another in the assessment trials.)

Perhaps regrettably for the Tories, Labour has been working on innovative national defence and resilience concepts for a long time. Shadow defence secretary John Healey, who has been making the most of his time in the post by scrutinising every aspect of our country’s defence, is likely to present equally innovative ideas. Indeed, one might ask why the Tories didn’t present their excellent national service proposal at some point during their 14 years (and counting) in power.

Either way, what matters is that the UK debate around defence and security is changing fundamentally. With threats of a military and non-military kind growing rapidly, it’s illusory to assume that our current armed forces, overstretched and plagued by recruitment shortfalls, can do even more. We have a whole generation of young people whose minds and skills might be just what we need in – and before – crises. It took Covid and Ukraine for the UK to realise it needed to think differently about crises. But now it’s happening.

Why Rishi Sunak wants to introduce national service

The first big new policy announcement of the election campaign is in from the Tories, and it’s likely to be a talker. Where Keir Starmer appears to be opting for a ‘Ming vase’ strategy – trying not to rock the boat ahead of polling day – the Tories are leaning towards the opposite. At 20 points behind in the polls, aides believe they need headline-grabbing, bold policies in order to get the public’s attention. The first of which is the return of mandatory national service.

In what the Tories are billing as ‘a bold new model for national service for 18-year-olds’, they propose to make it mandatory for all 18-year-olds living in the UK to either carry out a full-time placement over 12 months in the armed forces, or one weekend per month for a year volunteering in their community. The Tories say they would set up a royal commission and have the first pilot open within a year – then it would be mandatory by the end of the parliament in 2029. In a statement, Rishi Sunak said:

This is a great country but generations of young people have not had the opportunities or experience they deserve and there are forces trying to divide our society in this increasingly uncertain world. I have a clear plan to address this and secure our future. I will bring in a new model of national service to create a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country. This new, mandatory national service will provide life-changing opportunities for our young people, offering them the chance to learn real world skills, do new things and contribute to their community and our country.

So, what is the thinking behind this eye-catching pledge? Those close to the Prime Minister say that the new model for national service will answer some of today’s biggest problems. They point to recent protests where the young have supported hardline causes, to children being polarised on social media, and to unemployment – those who are no longer working as they have not learnt the skills they need to succeed. The argument goes that community work or military service will train up the UK’s youngsters with transferable skills and embed British values. As for the numbers, under the plans there would only be 30,000 places for the armed forces placement – which would be competitive and cover just 5 per cent of the relevant cohort. So the vast majority of 18-year-olds would end up being rejected from the military option and taking the civic route of community work.

The scheme appears to take inspiration from the Scandinavian model of national service – where they have a selective model for military service. The think tank Onward – which Sunak’s senior aide Will Tanner used to be in charge of – published a paper in August arguing that the government should reintroduce national service (abolished in 1960) to tackle the UK’s growing youth crisis. Former cabinet minister turned podcaster Rory Stewart called it a ‘clear, bold essential idea’. However, that report argued for an opt-out, whereas this policy is being billed as mandatory.

Already critics are making fun of the Tories over what they view as a backwards policy. The official Labour line is to argue it is an unfunded spending pledge of £2.5 billion (the Tories suggest the funding will come in addition to the 2.5 per cent of GDP spending pledge). It’s notable how different the two parties are approaching young people already – on the day the Tories put forward this policy, Keir Starmer suggested he would back votes for 16-year-olds. There are also questions of practicality. Would the government arrest those that don’t comply? This was raised in the Conservative’s internal briefing Q&A, although it was ruled out by Home Secretary James Cleverly on Sunday morning.

The small print is quite interesting. Sunak would fund National Service by axing the £2.6 billion UK Shared Prosperity Fund, a post-Brexit fund described when launched as ‘a central pillar of the UK government’s ambitious Levelling Up agenda and a significant component of its support for places across the UK.’ So money originally intended to support ‘high quality skills training, supporting pay, employment and productivity growth and increasing life chances,’ via the UKSPF would be used to bankroll Sunak’s new scheme.

For now, the Tories are keen for a fight on the issue, believing it will win them attention and put Labour under pressure about national pride and patriotism. It’s also no coincidence that the policy polls particular well with older voters and Reform party voters. It suggests the Tories are prioritising Reform switchers – and this policy is seen as a way to get them back.

How popular would it be? When Onward commissioned an poll for its scheme, it found ‘57 per cent of British people support national service versus 19 per cent who oppose it’. But its scheme was optional and it stressed that ‘the majority of people oppose a mandatory scheme, including nearly two-thirds of young people.’ When YouGov polled last September, it found 53 per cent were opposed to the idea of a year’s compulsory national service, with just 37 per cent in favour.

David Cameron’s National Citizen Service, brought in as part of his ‘Big Society’ idea in 2010, has been criticised as an expensive flop – with an audit finding it spent £10 million on unfilled places. Making it compulsory should, in theory, resolve that problem. Its broader electoral appeal, however, is another matter. The risk is that it looks like a way to force many 18-year-olds into unpaid labour.

Listen to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson discuss Sunak’s new policy on Sunday’s Coffee House Shots podcast:

Is Michael Gove set to become the next Strictly star?

As the exodus of Conservative MPs continues, Mr S is rather curious about what alternative careers retiring Tories have in their sights. The number of Conservative politicians stepping down at the general election is 78 and counting — and on Friday night, a resignation announcement from a high-profile Tory veteran stunned the nation. Michael Gove, currently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, announced just days after Sunak called the snap election that he would not be contesting his Surrey Heath seat, despite having a rather impressive majority of over 18,000.

The Tory Trot wrote that:

I know the toll office can take, as do those closest to me. No-one in politics is a conscript. We are volunteers who willingly choose our fate. And the chance to serve is wonderful. But there comes a moment when you know that it is time to leave. That a new generation should lead.

Strong stuff. But after a busy career working in a variety of government departments — from Education to Justice to Rural Affairs to Levelling Up — how will the long-standing MP manage to fill his free time? Well, it now transpires that the Surrey Heath MP has been polishing off his dancing shoes in preparation for a stint on a hit BBC competition show. The Times reports that, amongst preparing for paper columns and radio interviews, ‘we are promised there will be an appearance on Strictly Come Dancing‘. Talk about a silver lining…

Gove is of course no stranger to the dance floor, making a well-publicised appearance in the 80s-themed ‘Bohemia’ club in Aberdeen in 2021. He impressed club organisers so much with his lesser-seen contortions that they later described the politician as having ‘incredible energy and stamina’, adding he ‘definitely blew some cobwebs away’.

Soon to have more time for latin sambas than levelling up, the Tory foxtrotter’s Strictly debut may not be too far from our screens. And while his colleagues look to face a rather dismal election defeat, Gove seems set on dancing the pain away…

How many Tory big beasts will the Lib Dems oust?

It’s four days since Rishi Sunak surprised his colleagues and announced a summer election. So far a lot of the commentary has been on how Labour’s Keir Starmer could be the big winner from that call – with the party over 20 points ahead in the polls. Yet when it comes to the threat many of the cabinet are most worried about, it is actually the Liberal Democrats. There is much chatter among ministers today over Michael Gove’s shock decision to stand down. As Tim Shipman reports in the Sunday Times, Gove was long of the view that he would hold his constituency of Surrey Heath (majority: 18,349) so long as the Tories held onto at least 150 seats. The fact he has decided not to stand after all has led to speculation that Gove may have concluded the Tories could go under that figure.

In Surrey Heath, the main challenger to the Tories is the Lib Dems. Ed Davey’s party always thought they would only take Gove’s seat on a very good night – but they have plenty of other ‘Top Tory’ targets that they view as within grasp. Earlier today, Ed Davey kicked off his party’s campaign in Chichester alongside the Liberal Democrat candidate Jess Brown-Fuller – where the party hopes to claim the scalp of Education Secretary Gillian Keegan. Others they are aiming for include the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in Surrey and perhaps Jacob Rees-Mogg in North East Somerset. The worry is that if the campaign goes pear-shaped (and Tory MPs are not inspired so far), all these seats could start to fall into Ed Davey’’ hands.

So, how do the Liberal Democrats plan to make all this a reality? In the past, the mistake the party has made is to aim too high in terms of the number of seats they are targeting – and thereby spread resources too thinly and underperform. Take the then-leader Jo Swinson in 2019, who said she could be prime minister and then lost her own seat by a handful of votes after focussing on trying to make gains elsewhere. Under Davey, the focus is very much on a finite number of seats – primarily in Tory southern heartlands. More than two million leaflets will be distributed across the blue wall as part of their efforts.

The biggest challenge the Liberal Democrats think they have here is getting out the message that they are best placed to oust the Tories – rather than Labour. Talking about his seat – Godalming and Ash – Jeremy Hunt said it was one of the only times he would encourage voters to back Labour. His point being it would split the vote and help him defend it. The Lib Dems plan to take out many adverts trying to make this point to voters – but it is obviously harder to land when the polls suggest Labour is so far ahead and heading to a super-majority. A large chunk of the cabinet will be hoping this means voters won’t know who to back to get them out.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan remains unlikely

For a second day, yesterday, Chinese fighter jets and warships surrounded Taiwan for drills which the People’s Liberation Army said were designed to ‘test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas’. They followed the inauguration earlier this week of Taiwan’s new and democratically elected president Lai Ching-te, who Beijing has characterised as a ‘dangerous separatist’. The exercises were a ‘strong punishment’, said the PLA, presumably for Taiwan’s audacity in electing a leader who wants to distance the island as far as possible from the thuggish leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China sent bombers towards the island in attack formations and carried out mock missile attacks in coordination with naval vessels, according to Chinese state media. For the first time the drills included the Chinese coast guard (which is bigger than most navies in the region), which carried out ‘law enforcement’ drills – a euphemism for the harassment of regular ships bound for Taiwan. The drills were concentrated in five clusters, effectively surrounding the island, and also targeted smaller outlying islands controlled by Taiwan.

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On Thursday, Taiwan’s ministry of defence recorded 49 Chinese aircraft, 19 naval ships and seven coast guard vessels close to Taiwan’s territorial waters. It condemned the exercises as ‘irrational provocations’, and adding that the island has the ‘confidence and ability to protect national security’.

The drills were not unexpected. They have become almost routine, peaking when there is a political event – a high profile visit to Taiwan or an election or inauguration – which is not to the CCP’s liking. But there is also a growing sense of frustration in Beijing’s militarised tantrums and its angry rhetoric, a realisation that the island, which the CCP claims as its own and vows to take by force if necessary, is moving away from them. The CCP has never ruled Taiwan, historic claims are highly dubious, and most Taiwanese have no desire to live under Beijing’s rule. Beijing’s intimidation will only strengthen that resolve, though military exercises – covered extensively in the Chinese media – are as much about President Xi Jinping playing up his nationalist credentials to a domestic audience as they are a signal to Taiwan or the West.

The latest drills will no doubt be studied by Western military analysts for clues about Beijing’s future intentions and its emerging military prowess – particularly its ability to coordinate different parts of its armed forces – the navy, air force, army and rocket force – which is one of the biggest challenges of modern warfare. Some have noted that seizing territory was a much bigger element of this week’s exercises than in previous drills, which had practised for a blockade. That said, the drills appeared smaller than earlier encircling exercises and there no live fire.

For all the breathless talk of occupying Taiwanese land, which accompanied this week’s drills, a full-on invasion remains an extremely difficult and unlikely task, at least in the short to medium term. Estimates vary but anything between 300,000 and 2 million combat troops, along with thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, rocket launchers and armoured personnel carriers would need to cross the Taiwan Strait. It would be an operation of unprecedented size and complexity, and the preparations would be impossible to hide. Taiwan has important allies in the island’s geography and the climate of the Taiwan Strait. The coastal terrain has been described as a defender’s dream, with only 14 beaches regarded as suitable for an amphibious landing. The treacherous waters and winds of the Taiwan Strait, known as heishuigou or the ‘Black Ditch’ in local dialect, mean there are only two realistic windows for an invasion every year – late March to the end of April, or late September to the end of October.

This is why Beijing has resorted to ‘grey zone’ warfare, combining military intimidation with economic, cyber, disinformation and other tactics falling short (often only just short) of the sort of conflict that might trigger an American response. Beijing could step this up by seizing an outlying island or beginning the inspection of ships heading to the island. Others have described this as an ‘anaconda strategy’ – to slowly strangle the island. As one commentator put it on Chinese state television this week, ‘Taiwan’s economy is export-oriented, and most of its energy consumption relies on imports. Once besieged and blockaded, it can easily lead to economic collapse, turning it into a dead island. This exercise is focused on practicing a new mode of blockading Taiwan Island.’ Such a scenario would of course have a devastating impact on the global economy, in which China itself has a significant stake. 

Taiwan has responded with a new approach of its own, dubbed the ‘porcupine strategy’, which seeks to learn from the Ukraine war, making the island indigestible by investing heavily in small, mobile but highly lethal weapons systems. There has been an assumption that Russia’s bogged-down assault on Ukraine, and the relatively unified Western response to it, might give the CCP pause for thought over Taiwan. In fact, it seems to have accelerated efforts by Beijing to make its financial system more resilient against possible sanctions while generally putting the country on a more war-like footing. As the CCP continues its war games around Taiwan the most immediate danger is of miscalculation, with a small incident spiralling out of control.

The ICJ’s Rafah ruling is unwelcome and unwise

Yesterday afternoon, in a striking move, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court, ordered Israel to stop military operations in Rafah and to immediately reopen the Rafah border crossing with Egypt for the unhindered provision of humanitarian aid. The ICJ also ordered Israel to allow the UN to investigate allegations of genocide.

This dramatic step is the culmination of a bad month for the Israeli Government. Earlier in May, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor said he was seeking the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes. This week, in a series of co-ordinated announcements, Ireland, Spain and Norway recognised a Palestinian state, arguing that this would somehow bolster moves for peace in the region.

The ICJ’s order, which is legally binding and not open to appeal, is part of a wider case being pursued by South Africa against Israel. The South African Government has claimed that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and has consistently asked the ICJ to impose a ceasefire.

In its submissions to the court, Israel highlighted the fact that a cessation of hostilities would mean that ‘132 hostages would remain to languish in Hamas’ tunnels forsaken’ and that Hamas would be ‘left unhindered and free to continue its attacks against Israeli territory and Israeli civilians.’

The court’s latest order is the third it has made in respect of the Gaza conflict. The ICJ stated that the Israeli ground offensive in Rafah, which led to the displacement of 800,000 people, constituted ‘a change in the situation’ which justified the new measures. It concluded that the recent developments were ‘exceptionally grave’. 

The ICJ also stated that the Israeli government had not provided sufficient information concerning the safety of the population during the evacuation of Rafah and had not ‘sufficiently addressed and dispelled the concerns raised by its military offensive’. Accordingly, it ruled that Israel must immediately stop its offensive, and that any other action in Rafah which could bring about ‘the physical destruction’ of the Palestinian civilian population.

It is important to note that the new order does not mean that Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza. Nor does it mean that Israel has to stop all military operations in the Strip (the South African government had asked the court to order that Israel stop its military operations in the Gaza entirely, and ‘totally and unconditionally withdraw the Israeli army from the entirety of the Gaza Strip’, which the ICJ refused to do).

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Nonetheless, this attempt by the court to micromanage Israeli operations is both unwelcome and unwise. The UN’s judges have failed to show how the operation in Rafah is different from previous military operations in Gaza. The Israeli government claims that it has taken steps to evacuate civilians before military operations began. While the UN has suspended aid distribution in Rafah, Israel has said it is making extensive efforts to get aid into Gaza. Earlier in May, it opened the Western Erez crossing to aid trucks. The BBC has suggested that the situation in the north of Gaza ‘may have improved somewhat, thanks to the opening of additional crossing points.’

The timing of the order is particularly poor for a number of reasons.  Notably, casualty figures have recently been revised by the UN, acknowledging that far fewer women and children may have been killed than previously thought. Israel says it has killed 14,000 Hamas terrorists during the war, yet statistics provided by the Hamas run health ministry are still widely cited. Moreover, in the past week, Israel has recovered the bodies of six hostages, suggesting that it has bolstered its intelligence gathering (and with it the hopes of recovering more of the hostages that Hamas has refused to free).

No country can be expected to run a war in circumstances where each military decision can be second guessed by an international court. One can only imagine the howls of outrage if the West’s war against Islamic State in Mosul had been subject to similar interference. Britain and the US should look upon these developments with concern.

Spokespeople for the Israeli Government have already indicated that it will not comply with the ruling. Benny Gantz, a member of the War Cabinet, has said that Israel would continue its offensive ‘wherever and whenever necessary – including in Rafah’. Meanwhile the Foreign Ministry said that ‘Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part’, but did not suggest that operations in Rafah would be paused. 

The risk now is that Israel will feel under pressure to speed up its operations in Rafah, so that it can conclude the war more swiftly – a counterproductive result which could lead to additional civilian casualties.

The ruling is also likely to prove troublesome for Israel’s allies and will no doubt lead to further calls for an arms embargo and other sanctions. There is also an increasing risk that Israel will find itself isolated on the international stage. Already, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has been quotedsaying that the bloc’s commitment to the rule of law and its support for Israel ‘are going to be quite difficult to make compatible’.

Israel itself will also need to ask whether its government’s approach to the war in Gaza is becoming counterproductive. It will surely be dismayed to find the terrorists of Hamas being rewarded for their actions. But, arguably, Netanyahu is now paying the price for failing to set out a series of pragmatic and achievable war aims. 

While advocating the total destruction of Hamas may play well to a domestic audience, perhaps it might have been wiser to argue for their surrender, new governance in Gaza, backed by regional peacekeepers, and the unconditional release of the hostages. That at least would have been easier to justify on the international stage and put some pressure on the Hamas leadership.

I have always argued that international courts will not end this conflict. A political solution is required, which results in the removal of Hamas and the return of the hostages. However, given recent events, it is becoming clear that time is running out for Netanyahu to find a successful resolution to this crisis.

The smoking ban won’t go away

Has Rishi Sunak’s surprise summer election spared Britain some nanny state interventions? At first glance it seemed so, as it was revealed yesterday that the Prime Minister’s legacy legislation – the Tobacco and Vapes Bill – did not make it into the pile of ‘wash-up’ legislation that Parliament will try to pass before its dissolution next week.

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Sunak expressed his ‘disappointment’ that he was ‘not able to get that through by the end of the session’ but still cited his crackdown on flavoured vapes and a proposed ban on tobacco sales for anyone born after January 2009 as ‘evidence of the bold action’ he is willing to take as prime minister. 

The abandonment of a policy Sunak likes to hail as one of his great achievements has further fuelled the curiosity around his decision to call the general election for July. ‘He knows he called this election, yes?’ laments one frustrated MP. ‘His legacy, my seat’ quips another. If Sunak’s smoking ban does indeed bite the dust, he’ll have to be careful about where he looks for sympathy.

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But the policy is not going to disappear. It is only delayed. Both Keir Starmer and his shadow health secretary Wes Streeting have already committed to resuscitating the plans for bans if they find themselves forming a government in six weeks’ time. This is likely to be the start of a new wave of nanny state measures – 14 years of Conservative meddling may soon be exacerbated by Labour.

There was a brief moment six months into Sunak’s government where it seemed like common sense might prevail. As inflation continued to bite, contributing to a very painful cost-of-living crisis, the plan to ban two-for-one deals on so-called ‘junk food’ was postponed for another two years. It seemed a rare, honest acknowledgement from ministers of what nanny state policies really do: make life more expensive for people. George Osborne and Theresa May’s sugar tax has done nothing to reduce obesity rates, for example, yet accounted for £355 million for the Treasury in the last financial year. 

It seemed, in the moment, that Sunak’s promises to sort the country’s finances was really the priority: that tinkering with personal freedoms would take a back seat to high-spending, low-growth crises affecting the country.

But the moment was short-lived. In his Conservative Party Conference speech last year – made up of pick-and-mix policies, including reforms to A-levels – Sunak decided to take a play from Labour’s handbook and announce a New Zealand-style smoking ban that his opposition had been eyeing up. 

This wasn’t your normal kind of meddling: it was a precedent-setting ban that would usher in two tiers of consumer rights for adults, depending on when you were born. Nineteen-year-olds would have different rights from 18-year-olds, and one day, 95-year-olds would have different rights from 94-year-olds. All this to stamp out a trend that is already on its way out, with smoking levels (and the number of children ever trying a cigarette) at historic lows.

There will be plenty of Tories who are quietly delighted that the smoking ban has fallen by the wayside thanks to the election – not least since New Zealand's new conservative coalition has abandoned their own plans, making the UK the only country in the developed world to be pushing this curb on personal freedoms for adults. But much of the damage has already been done: the majority of Tory MPs fell in line at the Bill’s second reading, with mainly the Trussite wing of the party standing up for personal freedoms. For defending the basic principles underpinning personal liberty, their arguments were chalked up as radical and extreme.

This makes it much harder for a potential Tory opposition to stand up to a pro-nannying Labour government – even if the party is recalibrated to support more classically liberal values (and that’s a big if). 

Labour didn’t need much inspiration on the nannying front. This is the party that made one of its priorities in the capital the banning of images of jam and butter on the tube. Starmer proudly proclaimed that he is ‘up for that fight’ to embrace the ‘nanny state’ at the start of this year. ‘We're not going to sit idly by while children become fatter, more unhealthy, less happy,’ said Streeting around the same time, in reference to ‘junk food’ ads. 

We have every reason to think the nanny state will be back in full force. And unlike the Tory party, which often signals that it’s implementing crackdowns and bans with a heavy heart, Labour aren’t hiding their enthusiasm for intervention. Expect the smoking ban to return, with fewer exemptions than were being considered under the Tories (for cigars, for example). Expect supermarket food deals and ‘junk food ‘advertisements to grab Labour’s attention. Thanks to the Tories, Labour will have a new mechanism to implement all this: creating a new set of restricted rights for young adults, different from the rights of their older peers.

Sunak is very likely to secure his legacy, although now he will have to share the credit. It may well be his announcement, but Labour’s law, that makes it illegal to sell tobacco to the next generation of adults. Meanwhile the country prepares for more meddling in their personal choices: the pathway cleared for Labour by the Tories, who abandoned the defence of liberty a long time ago. That’s a legacy, to be sure, but is it one to celebrate?

Germany was right to take the Reichsbürger threat seriously

Germany is in the grip of one of the most extensively covered courtroom dramas in recent memory. On trial is an alleged terrorist group of nine men and women centred around the 72-year-old aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss. They stand accused of having plotted to violently overthrow the state before they were arrested in December 2022. The groups’ network is said to reach far into Germany’s armed forces, police and politics, making the case one of the most bizarre and troubling in modern German history.

The case is so large that it had to be split into three parts. The first one began in Stuttgart in April. Another one is due to start in June in Munich. On Tuesday, the most high-profile segment, the case against Reuss and those prosecutors deem to be his associates, was launched in Frankfurt in a lightweight hall specially built for this purpose.

Some of the attending journalists felt reminded of the historic trials against the so-called Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist organisation in West Germany held responsible for 34 deaths as well as abductions, bombings and robberies in the 1970s and 80s. It was one of the biggest threats to the post-war order the country had seen up to that point.

The trial in Frankfurt is being treated just as seriously. Security is tight. The venue is surrounded by razor wire and heavily armed police. Many of the attending observers brought folding chairs in anticipation of the long queues to pass security checks.

The authorities are right to be cautious. During the investigation into the group’s activities, police found hundreds of weapons, ranging from firearms to bladed weapons and munition. One of the defendants in the Munich part of the trial, named as Markus L., had shot at police with a semi-automatic rifle when they raided his flat in March 2023. Several bullets hit police shields at chest height, one hit a policeman’s arm, and another officer was injured.

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Markus L. is on trial for attempted murder but is by no means the only dangerous individual in the group. Prosecutors say that Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a real estate developer, acted as one of the leaders of a terrorist group called ‘Patriotic Union’, which supposedly met at his castle in central Germany to plot an armed coup. The idea was to storm the parliament building in Berlin, arrest politicians and install Reuss as head of state.

The prosecution also says that it was the aristocrat’s role to reach out to Russia to gain support for the undertaking. His girlfriend Vitalia B., who is a Russian national and also on trial in Frankfurt, stands accused of establishing contact with the Russian consulate in Leipzig and accompanying Reuss there.

Reuss’s defence argued on Tuesday that it was true that he had held meetings at his home, but claimed they were of a political nature only. ‘He denies he was ever violent,’ the lawyer added. ‘He denies that he ever wanted to kill people or made any plans to do so.’

The defence attempted to brush off the indications of a military putsch as the harmless fantasies of a group of delusional cranks. ‘They’re not terrorists. They’re slightly crazy,’ the defence lawyer insisted and painted an image of a group of people opposed to Covid measures who went down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories together.

Crazy conspiracy theorists they may well be, and, as more and more absurd details emerge of the case, it’s tempting not to take them seriously. The group are part of the Reichsbürger movement which is estimated to have around 23,000 followers. They don’t believe the current German state is legitimate and want to restore monarchical rule since they deem the forced abdication of the last German Kaiser at the end of the First World War invalid. The indictment suggested that the passing of the late Queen Elizabeth II may have been regarded as a ‘signal’ to act by some in the group.

But despite such bizarre revelations, it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the group’s capacity for violence and disruption. Rüdiger von Pescatore, another pensioner in his seventies on trial in Frankfurt, is said to be the ringleader of the military arm of the Patriotic Union. He is a former commander of a paratroop battalion in the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, and one of several ex-military figures on trial. He and his associates are alleged to have attempted to reach out to army and police units to gather support for a coup, holding several documented meetings and scouting out military compounds.

A former Member of Parliament for the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) also entered the courtroom at around half past ten on Tuesday, looking frail and gloomy in her thick down jacket. Birgit Malsack-Winkemann repeatedly shook her head indignantly as the indictment was read out for over two and a half hours.

Before her arrest, the 59-year-old lived in a terraced house in Berlin, where she is said to have prepared for ‘Day X’, the day of the storming of parliament, by stocking up on tinned food and bottled water. Police also found firearms, flammable liquids and a target sheet with holes in it, which she had brought home from the shooting range where she was a member.

Malsack-Winkemann’s real value to the group, however, was insight knowledge of the Bundestag, the German parliament, and access to it. The prosecution alleges that she brought other Patriotic Union members there to scout out the logistics for the day of the coup.

The list of the other defendants makes for troubling reading, too. There is a man named as Michael F., for instance, who is an ex-policeman. A politician called Johanna F.-J. who is alleged to have convinced an associate to donate €150,000 (£128,000) to the group. More funds are said to have been organised by a financial advisor who allegedly donated over €160,000 (£126,000) to the cause. The indictment estimates the group had around €500,000 (£426,000) at their disposal in total.

The trials are expected to go on for years and cost huge amounts of money. The purpose-built court in Frankfurt alone is estimated to have cost €1 million (£852,000). The presiding judge leads a panel of six subordinate judges. A total of 26 defence lawyers accompany the nine defendants.

The scale of the trial reflects what is at stake. Despite the fact that the plans of the Patriotic Union didn’t come to fruition, the group have huge potential for disruption because of their deep reach into army, police, politics and funding opportunities. Figureheads like Reuss give the fanatical end of the Reichsbürger scene the aristocratic flair they crave. It’s a potent combination that should ring alarm bells rather than draw ridicule. The German authorities are right to treat this as one of the biggest threats to the state in Germany’s post-war history.