24 hours later it looks even more as though they hadn’t thought through at all…

Was just think in the same.. Just why does he do this?

Well this is awkward.

Yes it'll never happen, but imagine thinking it's better to spend £2.6bn on a back-of-an-envelope scheme to force 18 year olds to do community service one weekend in four, than directly tackling child poverty through eg ending two-child benefit cap.

Great take…

Reassuring, serious, a sense of duty: who is Keir Starmer really? theguardian.com/politics/artic…

Another thing about Sunak's National Service announcement. Having to cost it by cancelling Levelling Up is what happens when you don't do a fiscal event before calling an election... it means their costings doc with the Manifesto will be VERY INTERESTING to fiscal nerds

Brilliant!! Good night 😴 Nos da 💤

Daft plan lasts 2 minutes under the slightest scrutiny…

The national service nonsense does give me the opportunity to tweet one of my favourite recent bits of polling when Ipsos actually ran the famous 'Yes Minister' questions as a randomised experiment, and showed that it worked.

Before you get to the substance of these proposals, there is something really quite unseemly about the Conservatives planning to introduce national service for a demographic that just does not vote for them

Interesting implications for the UK's social contract 📃

Flashback to my childhood when 'bring back national service' was the right-wing answer to everything.

That was a long time ago, I thought we'd left such nonsense behind.

But incidentally, have you any idea how expensive such a scheme would be for the public sector to run?

Labour leads the Tories among every age group except the over-70s and the Greens lead the Tories among the under-40s.

Thanks Stuart Brady for setting up Labour Society For Sport and organising its first Dinner with 350 guests at the Oval this week. Perfect timing 24 hours after a general was called. Sorry Brian Moore and Tonia Antoniazzi MP I spoil this perfect front row ?

I guess better than hiding in a fridge. theguardian.com/politics/artic…

The 2019-24 parliament is prorogued. It’s done.

Tory MPs: save time with my handy universal resignation letter. #BindependenceDay

At this point the Tories have more candidates to find (150) than Reform UK (130)

Not very confident are they? The ones I’ve spoken to are often desperate to have moved on…

A Labour source said: “Sorry: there is no Labour source quote that can make this more ridiculous than it already is”