ConservativeHome's Platform

David Abbott: Could national service mend our broken society?

David Abbott, journalist and author of Culture and Identity, argues that it is worth considering resurrecting the idea of National Service.

It’s not often that I find myself in agreement with the Daily Express, but when they welcomed David Cameron's proposals for a short version of national service - a "national citizenship service" - I thought they had a point. Further scouring of the Express website revealed that no less an authority than Andrew Marr, normally more to the left of things, had declared it a good idea in his latest book.

So could bringing back national service work? The idea has numerous attractions.  I challenge anyone who’s viewed ‘Bad Lads Army’ not to be impressed by the apparent changes in the featured delinquents. You might think the last thing we ought to be doing with our young people is teaching them even more about how to use guns and kill people, but this would be to miss the point.  OK, it’s a television programme; I have no idea what was edited out, nor the degree of recidivism.  Nor was it all pretty viewing.  However, on the face of it, being subjected to the discipline of a few worldly wise NCOs seemed to have an enlightening effect on the dodgy delinquents.

Now, your idea of NCOs may be either wildly idealised or darkly pessimistic, so let me sing their praises for them.  The Bad Lads Army NCOs were not saints, but neither were they sinners.   They would swear and curse and yes, at times, bully. But it was benevolent bullying.  And later on, these were blokes who could ask the dodgy boys some tough moral questions.  One of the lads was put on the spot by an NCO who asked him whether he loved the girlfriend with whom he had a baby, yet had refused to marry.  On another occasion a lad was put under severe moral pressure because it was believed he had cheated in a physical task by using pain killers. He caved in, confessed and was punished.

David Abbott: The fetish of competition

David Abbott, journalist and author of Culture and Identity, argues that both the Left and the Right are wrongly making a fetish of competition in public services.

As we face the prospect of a longish run up to the next General Election, Conservatives should be looking around for more policy ammunition and David Cameron has made much of re-casting the Tory Party in a new light.  At such times it is traditional to set fire to a few holy cows. But one he hasn’t touched is competition. Isn’t the obsession with competition ripe for such treatment?

Competition used to be an idea which belonged to the right. But now it seems to be part of the consensus, a general, unquestioned idea that competition is good for us and is an unqualified social good.

Competition in all things, as practised in the market, will, we are told, benefit everybody. The competent, the efficient and the clever – all of these, whether people or institutions, public or private – will thrive. It will be you and me, the public, the average Joe customers, who will be the beneficiaries.

David Abbott: It's the state, stupid

David Abbott, an author and journalist, argues that David Cameron may be missing the wood for the trees on the size of the state.

David Cameron’s attempt to modernise the Conservative Party and to wrest the centre ground in British politics from New Labour’s mendacious grasp has had plenty of critics from the right of his party.

They don’t like much of Cameron’s style, but being the old economic right, they are characterised above all by their love of the free market and a touching belief in the need for a minimal, rolled back state.

Cameron has been working hard to keep them at a distance, but he might find it helpful to think harder about the state, for it is the state surely, which is at the heart of contemporary social change.

Sophisticated, yet able to be distilled into a simple, powerful, and clear message; another ingredient which any successful political project requires is a guiding ideological rationale, which can be simply put and will capture the popular imagination.