Thread by @pimlicat

GOOD MORNING!

I have just defended young people on @LBC against the militarist Tobias Ellwood who was out on behalf of the Cons for compulsory national service.

Clip soon but my main points were:

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Young people have been failed terribly by this Government. Generational inequality has never been as bad as it is now. The current generation are the first to be less well off than their parents.
Young people have schools with crumbling concrete and a teacher crisis.

They have sky high tuition fees.
Rents are eyewatering and home ownership beyond the reach of most.
And Brexit has robbed young brits of their ability to study, work and live across 27 other countries visa free.

Any serious government would be tackling these issues if they genuinely cared about young Brits.
But this policy is a clear sign of desperation, designed to distract everyone from Sunak’s disastrous election campaign and smacks of pure prejudice against young people.

If you give them a stake in society they would want to defend it.
If you want to instil good values in young people then lead by example - but your party has overseen one of the most corrupt, sleaze ridden governments in living memory.

If you want to instil good values in young people don’t have two prime ministers who broke covid rules. Don’t have a Prime Minister like Liz truss who blamed everyone but herself for her mistakes.

If you want honest hardworking young people, don’t be in a party that sold Brexit to a nation on a pack of lies.
Want young people to behave better? Then they should start with themselves. Uphold the Nolan principles and adhere to the law.

What are they getting in return? Do those who participate get free university tuition fees? Do they get subsidised rent on a quality home in a good area? What’s the deal?

Because at the moment it looks like punishing young people to pursue the votes of some older voters almost ALL of whom will never have had to have done national service.

I asked him if he plans to get £1.5 billion of the £2.5 billion a year cost of the programme by gutting the post-Brexit shared prosperity fund, which was meant to replace the loss of EU structural funding. That instead of levelling up young people, he'll be punishing them further

I pointed out the scandalous spending by his party in Government much of which could've helped fund our armed forces properly bestforbritain.org/scandalous_spe…

And finally, I challenged him on his point that the UK's needs a larger pool of trained killers given that the size of the armed services under the Tories has fallen from 177,000 in 2010 to 130,000 in 2024.

I firmly believe this desparate policy move will end any remaining complacency among young people to get out and vote on 4 July.

We'll be publishing recommendations on how to vote tactically at to help them.getvoting.org

First clip:

https://x.com/BestForBritain/status/1794620454185181695

🙏Thank you all so much for the supportive feedback. If you can help our campaign, please do. Every penny will be put to good use to keep these people out for a generation bestforbritain.org/election_crowd…