To see the disconnect between the UK Conservative Party and Northern Ireland, look no further than the Tory National Service proposal.
If it wins the 4 July election, which based on current polling appears well-nigh impossible, it is promising a policy that conjures up images of post-war Britain.
In the 1950s the first James Bond book was written, the first motorway in the UK was opened and wartime rationing ended.
Back then, all physically fit males between 17 and 21 had to serve in the British armed forces for 18 months.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s reworked offering is different.
But it would effectively mean all 18-year-olds in the UK would be required to go down one of two routes.
Either apply for one of 30,000 selective military placements reserved in areas like logistics, cyber security and procurement or civil response or, spend a weekend every month, the equivalent of 25 days over the year, volunteering with organisations like the emergency services.
However, there is not much voluntary about mandatory volunteering.
No one, they are saying, would be compelled to opt for the military option.
That did not stop Labour leader Kier Starmer dubbing it a “teenage Dad’s Army”.
It was announced a couple of days after the British Prime Minister visited Belfast docks, allowing him to sidestep scrutiny of how it would work in Northern Ireland.
We have heard nothing yet to suggest it would not extend to 18-year-olds in Northern Ireland.
There are more than 23,000 of them according to the latest statistics.
A lot of them live in predominately nationalist areas which tend to have a younger demographic.
We have been here before. Two attempts to introduce wartime conscription in Northern Ireland were withdrawn due to nationalist opposition, though 40,000 people from both communities joined the British armed services.
Neither was peacetime conscription in the form of the old National Service ever extended to Northern Ireland.
So no one saw this coming.
In Irish, “Tháining sé aniar aduaidh orm”, means it took me unawares but literally translates to ‘it came from the north west’.
This particular shock announcement came from the opposite direction, from the south east, formulated in Conservative Party Headquarters in London and designed to appeal to Tory heartlands.
But it was no less of a surprise. One of those it caught off guard was Northern Ireland Office Minister Steve Baker.
You would think given the sensitives of mandatory service to the British state for people in a divided society like Northern Ireland, he would have been kept in the loop. Apparently not.
He took to X to point out that it was a Conservative party proposal, not government policy.
“A government policy would have been developed by ministers on the advice of officials and collectively agreed. I would have had a say on behalf of Northern Ireland.
“But this proposal was developed by a political adviser or advisers and sprung on candidates, some of whom are relevant ministers,” he said.
Not a fan then and he is not the only one.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood described the plan as a “shameless stunt by a dying government”.
“This policy platform is unserious, unwanted and unworkable. How does Rishi Sunak think he will force kids in Northern Ireland to perform national service in the British Army or undertake ‘mandatory volunteering’ – a total contradiction in terms?” he said.
Even a former military man Major Tim Collins who is running for the Ulster Unionists in the Westminster election said it was a “crazy idea” and the British Army estate had been shrunk so much they had have nowhere to house 30,000 teenagers.
So why float an idea that appears to have been poorly thought through, both in Britain and more especially in how it would apply in Belfast?
The Tory base is older and it votes and they need them all to come out on 4 July.
Nostalgia sits well with that generation and some may have stories of family experience of National Service and a sense of post-war national unity.
It is also a great diversion from all the things the Conservatives do not want to talk about.
National Service looks like a classic distraction tactic, a military feint if you like.
No one, especially in Northern Ireland, has been taken in by it.
