Peter Black
June 5, 2024
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
Imagine you’re in charge of a government that’s been in power for a long time and it’s pretty obvious the people are tuning you out. You’ve tried and tried to draw attention to all the great stuff you’ve been doing, but, darn it, you’re still way, way behind in the polls.
What’s a seemingly well-meaning but doomed government to do?
Well, why not propose something so out-of-the-blue, so moon shot, so controversial, so strangely appealing, it just might change the conversation and breathe a bit of hope into your political prospects?
You probably think we’re talking here about the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. Actually, we’re referring to a Conservative government, the one that’s ruled the United Kingdom for the past 14 years under five different prime ministers.
The current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has called a general election for July 4, which was a bit of a surprise; more surprising still, he announced a major plank in the Tories’ platform: a program of compulsory national service for 18-year-old Britons.
If the Conservatives are elected, all 18-year-olds would be required to do one of two types of national service: 30,000 would spend one year in the armed forces, and the others would be compelled to work one weekend a month for some non-military organization such as the police, fire service or the National Health Service.
The proposal was met with much mockery and howls of derision, but polls show the plan has about 47 per cent support overall, although the 18-plus target group is 65 per cent opposed.
It may take a bit of time to see whether the idea – still short on details – will move the polling needle for Sunak’s Conservatives. A recent survey found them 27 points behind the Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, a former top prosecutor and human rights lawyer.
As bad as things are for the Trudeau Liberals, it’s hard to imagine them trailing Pierre Poilievre Conservatives by such a grand canyon as the British Tory-Labour split. The gap has been a steady 20 per cent for months, suggesting folks are lapping up Poilievre’s incessant haranguing of all things Trudeau.
But there is the slightest glimmer of hope for the Grits. A recent poll showed the Liberals are actually regaining ground among voters aged 18-29, trailing 28 to 32.
Not for nothing do recent speeches by the prime minister and his entourage contain obligatory references to Millenials and Gen Z, the groups so frustrated in their aspirations to join the Liberals’ much-vaunted middle class nirvana.
What, though, remains in the Liberal bag of tricks, as the months count down to the reckoning at the polls come the fall of 2025, to entice younger voters, or voters of any age for that matter, to return to the fold and grant the Grits a fourth straight mandate?
Trudeau must be feeling a bit like Seymour in The Little Shop of Horrors, trying to feed the insatiable monster plant. “I’ve given you cheap daycare, I’ve given you dental care, I’ve given you child care cheques, I’ve given you legal weed, I’ve given you gun bans, I’ve given you electric car plants, I’ve given you pandemic grants, I’ve given you a pipeline, I’ve given you carbon tax rebates … and on and on.”
Crickets, say the pollsters, and (spoiler alert) the monster eats Seymour in the end.
(Of course, he’s also given rampant wokeness, blackface, SNC-Lavalin, immigration woes, massive deficits, international goof-ups and on and on.)
The Liberal-NDP supply and confidence pact expires about a year from now, leaving the governing party little time to come up with some policy ideas, some Hail Mary brainstorm that will change the narrative enough to avoid utter annihilation at the hands of the Conservatives.
A national service program is not likely on the planning board in the Liberal Party election 2025 war room, but surely the Grits might prefer to go out with some big bang of an idea, rather than a whimper of surrender.
30