RICHARD ORD: National Service or Madame Whiplash's Spanking Tuesdays? You decide...

'I'm sure my mobile phone is in here somewhere...'FILE photo dated 24/10/52 of national service men of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment packing their kit at Fowler Barracks, Tidworth, in readiness for their departure for Korea. Teenagers would not be sent to jail for defying the Tories' proposed "mandatory" national service, James Cleverly has said, as Labour branded the policy a "gimmick". Photo credit: PA/PA Wire

Just in case you thought it was all just a bad dream, let me be the bearer of bonkers truth: Yes, the Tories did say they would bring back National Service.

Home Secretary James Cleverly was metaphorically frogmarched out to explain this ‘good’ news to TV viewers. He wasn’t convincing. The idea was run up the flagpole, but no-one was saluting.

National Service was going to get teenagers out of ‘their bubble’ and into the community doing good, learning discipline, spirit of the blitz, yadda yadda yadda… And in case those well-worn platitudes didn’t work, Jimmy C was quick to point out that he worked in military service and it didn’t do him any harm. In fact, it made him the man he is today and he was yet to hear anyone else who followed his lead to give their time to armed service have a bad word to say about it. Well, of course, they aren’t going to have a bad word to say. They volunteered to do it.

I’m sure those people who give up their spare time to indulge in kinky sex games at Madame Whiplash’s Spanking Tuesdays are equally effusive about their experiences. ‘Nothing wrong with some blindfolded discipline. Never did me any harm. Makes a man of you…’

But you try and make Spanking Tuesdays compulsory to all over-18s.

Of course, a cursory inspection of this new National Service revealed it to be nothing like the ‘by your beds’ version we would expect. For a start, military service is not compulsory.

There’s 30,000 military places up for grabs and you have to volunteer to do it for a year. If you’re 18, unemployed, and fancy the army, why wouldn’t you just sign up the real thing anyway? They’re desperate for recruits and, hey, you’d get paid!

The rest of this National Service policy is woolly to say the least. You’ll spend a 25 days with the police, or NHS, or a charity, or something, and you’d be expected to, erm, do something.

But woe betide anyone who point blank refuses to take part. The full might of the Government will be brought to bear on any individual planning to dodge National Service. As successive ministers have pointed out (and I’m paraphrasing here): ‘Refuseniks won’t be jailed, of course, but they will be, erm, you know, err, we haven’t really thought of a punishment yet...’

Who knows, maybe they’ll have their bottoms spanked!