I’ve got to be honest that in my list of possible columns for this week, I didn’t have any plans to write about the return of national service. But we’re in a general election now, so I guess anything goes.

What’s it going to be next week? Bringing back hanging? The birch? Imperial measurements? The corn laws? I guess we’ll wait to see.

Meanwhile, it’s fair to say that the youth vote has not exactly been swinging towards Sunak with his unexpected move: having talked about banning their smartphones and making them do extra maths, a few months in the army feels like the unpalatable cherry on top of a Sunakian childhood.

Equally thrilled at the prospect have been the military themselves. “Basically bonkers”, offered up Admiral Alan West, the former chief of the naval staff.

Defence minister Andrew Murrison, meanwhile, claimed last Thursday that such a scheme “could damage morale, recruitment and retention and would consume professional military and naval resources”.

Part of Sunak’s pitch for the election is that he is the only person to offer the country the security he needs.

Sunak is right to highlight security as an issue the country needs to focus on in the years ahead. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the landscape here. China and Taiwan is another likely flashpoint, not to mention instability in the Middle East.

Add in the unpredictability of a second Trump presidency and the world looks a scarier place than for decades.

Back in the early 1990s, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to some historians talking about “the end of history”. Now the same people talk about those years as a “holiday from history”, as potential threats increase once more.

Yet the UK is hardly in fighting shape to face all this. The army has been reduced to its smallest size in 400 years. The Royal Navy is taking ships out of service due to lack of sailors.

Plans for a mass parachute drop to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day have been scaled back because there aren’t enough planes.

A report by the Public Accounts Committee back in March said there was “no credible Government plan to deliver desired military capabilities”, highlighting a £17 billion hole in the defence equipment budget.

As well as its mismanagement of the military, this government has repeatedly got the big calls wrong: from Cameron’s cosying up with China to the minimal response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine was a consequence of such inactions.

Given this track record, to argue that the country would only be safe in his hands is, like Rishi Sunak himself, a bit rich.