Raymond J. de Souza: U.K. shows national service no longer anathema to conservatives

Rishi Sunak’s surprise election plank indicates a shift in conservatism

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Published Jun 23, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, seen at a summit near Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 15, has proposed a return to national service in the U.K., requiring all 18-year-olds to spend a year in either community service or military training. Photo by URS FLUEELER/POOL / AFP via Getty Images

Before the U.K. Conservatives are ejected from Westminster, it is worth noting how conservatism has changed during their 14 years in office, the emphasis moving from commercial to cultural, and from individualistic to communitarian. The “national service” plank in their current election platform was a surprise, but indicates that shift.

How enormous will the Tory defeat be? Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, is only one of many who suggest — or perhaps wish — that after the general election on July 4, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will move to his US$7-million beachfront penthouse in Santa Monica, Calif. Farage and his Reform are set to do what Preston Manning and his Reform did in Canada in 1993; hive off conservative votes from an already weak Conservative governing party, leading to an electoral calamity.

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In effect a billionaire by marriage, Sunak might welcome decamping to low-tax America. When he was chancellor of the exchequer, his wife, the daughter of an Indian billionaire, claimed “non-domicile” status in Britain in order to reduce her tax burden. That was a bit awkward when Sunak was raising taxes, so she changed her status to domiciled. It thus proved less awkward when their domicile shifted to 10 Downing Street. After Sunak ends his 20-month sublet there, it would be lucrative to be non-domiciled not only in theory but in actuality.

So hapless is Sunak — he managed to turn the D-Day commemorations into a catastrophic gaffe by departing early — that the jokes are already starting. And more than jokes. This week Sunak professed himself furious over reports that his campaign staffers were wagering on the election. No one thinks that Sunak’s team were betting on him to win.

In a fortnight, Sunak will lead the Conservatives to a crushing defeat, perhaps the worst in their history, likely losing his own seat, the first sitting prime minister ever to do so. But on his way out the door, Sunak proposed a radical new policy at the outset of the campaign: mandatory national service.

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The proposal is not military conscription, but would mandate by law 12 months in community service, or one year of military training, for all 18-year-olds.

National service would promote “a shared sense of purpose among our young people and a renewed sense of pride in our country,” said Sunak.

Mandatory purpose, pride and patriotism is not the libertarian way.

Britain abolished conscription — called “national service” — in 1960. In the United States, the issue came to a head in the late 1960s due to the Vietnam War. The anti-conscription drive was not only led by the antiwar left, but by the libertarian right. Milton Friedman, uber-defender of the market and future Nobel laureate, drafted the main proposals for Richard Nixon in 1967, then preparing to run for president. Nixon ended the draft in 1973.

That would be the consensus conservative position. Military competence and professionalism would be enhanced by a volunteer force, rather than a coerced one. And the state should not be in the coercion business. Military or community service, in the libertarian view, was a valid option — all options are valid — but not to be favoured by the state.

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The conservatism of the common good, of traditional ways, of community values and customs, took a back seat to the expansion of individual liberties in the late 1970s and 1980s. Yet that strain of conservatism never completely disappeared, and often expressed itself precisely in high esteem for the armed forces, for those who had “served.”

In 1990, there came an early indication that some conservatives were uneasy with freedom for freedom’s sake alone, conservatives who sought a higher end toward which the creative energies of liberty could be directed. It came in book form from William F. Buckley, Jr., who entitled his call for national service, Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country. Buckley noted the idea was gathering support.

“Both Democrats and Republicans, are saying that participation in the community should take more active form than merely paying taxes, buying and selling in the marketplace, and voting (occasionally, if at all),” wrote Buckley.

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The idea that we are citizens, not merely taxpayers or consumers, and that our deepest ties to our country are not exhausted by the state or the market, is at the root of national service. That is a conservative idea of venerable pedigree.

The objection then comes: National service enforced by the state seems an odd way to implement it.

So national service sat there for decades, representing a strain of conservatism but not gathering sufficient support during the libertarian turn conservatism took. But conservatism has significantly changed in the past decade, at least in its political expression, most evident in the twin eruptions of 2016 — Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Market freedom is no longer a clinching argument in all circumstances. Attention is paid to communities in distress, where it is observed that young men in particular lack not only opportunities but purpose. National service speaks to all that. And it can be done in a conservative voice.

Proposing national service in the last weeks of his premiership is a weak effort. But he did propose it. Sunak won’t be the last conservative to do so.

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