On Saturday, the Conservative Party announced an election pledge to bring back National Service, while being almost 50 points behind Labour with young people in the polls. Eh?

Politically, the move is absolutely barmy. It feels as if Sunak’s advisors are taking the piss at this point. But we’re Messy, not The Newstatesman. So we’ll leave that kettle of fish for now.

What is National Service? What might a day of National Service look like? Are we all getting sent to the front line?

National Service explained:

In peace time, National Service began in January 1949. It required all able men between 17-21 to service in one of the armed forces for 18 months. They then were left on the reserves list for four years. This scheme only came to an end in 1960.

The new pledged policy (which, lets be honest, isn’t going to come into effect unless every member of Labour drops dead before July 4th) is different.

18-year-olds would be able to apply for one of 30,000 military placements. Alternatively, if you don’t fancy ending up as pink mist in an artillery accident, you would be able to volunteer for community service for one weekend a month.

Military placements would be in areas such as logistics, cyber security, procurements or civil response operations. The nations safety could see be in the hands of spotty 18-year-olds. The placements would last a year.

Do not fear though. Most 18-year-olds would not be taking part in the military side of things.

Community service volunteering would be with the NHS, fire service, ambulance, search and rescue or other critical local infrastructure organisations. Yes, search and rescue as in possible kidnappings or suicides search and rescue.

Sunak believes having A-Level students either practise defusing landmines or looking after old people will help foster “national spirit”.

Not getting involved would lead to non-criminal sanctions, although it’s yet to be revealed what those sanctions would be.

The day of a military National Service volunteer:

If you are young enough and end up as a brave soul doing military volunteering, this is what your day would look like:

You’d have to be awake at 4:30am. This is enough to put most of us off by itself.

Then, you have 30 minutes to get washed and ready for the day, ready to be in formation by 5am.

You’ve then got an hour of physical training from 5am to 6am. Think rolling heavy tires through mud and rope burn.

Finally, you get some breakfast after 6am. There’s no rest for the wicked however, as you’ll need to get changed into your uniform to train with the drill sergeant until midday.

Lunch is then at noon. Straight back to training after.

Dinner is at 7pm. You are then graciously granted some person time afterwards, but it’s lights out at 9pm.

Sleep. Repeat.

Can’t visualise it? Don’t worry, Messy has got you covered:

@messymagazineuk The country is in safe hands with the Messy team on the front line🫡🫡 To hear our opinion on Rishi’s latest ✨interesting✨ propsal and how it coild impact people in their twenties, check out out webstie 🔥 #fyp #messy #magazine #capcut #20s #rishi #nationalservice #kendallk #dancemoms #army #funny #election #generalelection #tory #labour #gennylec #UK ♬ original sound – Isaiah 💟