National Service? Define. A year in a military which has been hollowed out and hasn’t the time or the inclination or the personnel to train an intake of one year reluctant squaddies?  Or spending some weekends a year on some form of community improvement?

The military top brass have already poured several buckets of cold water on the first. And the second? Kind of depends on how it is structured. There’s more than a whiff of back-of-the-envelope calculation going on here, listening to often contradictory spokespeople.

Apparently it’s all about springing young people from their “bubble”, the echo chamber in which some choose to live. Yet is there a more obvious bubble than Eton, which keeps giving us Prime Ministers, many of whose careers end in car crashes?

Of course Rishi Sunak didn’t go there. He went to Winchester which, hilariously, costs more than Eton – north of £50,000.

What all these bastions of upmarket privilege give their scholars is an unshakeable self-confidence, and the belief that they are born to rule, since the rest of us clearly couldn’t cut it.

It is why vox pops keep coming up with puzzled punters wondering how all the millionaires round the cabinet table can even begin to imagine what it’s like to have not enough money for essential bills, or to have to use a food bank for the first time.

The idea of community service is not, of itself, bad, but it’s one which needs the kind of hard thinking and heavy lifting which has not been much in evidence of late. And the compulsory element is also problematical given that voluntary service, by definition, relies on volunteers.

A final thought: service in the Israeli Defence Force is compulsory except for the ultra religious right. Not surprisingly that is a bone of contention for all those who don’t qualify for this special exemption, and their parents.

Two of these ultras sit in the Israeli cabinet and have resisted all attempts to construct a cease fire. Their Prime Minister goes along with continuing the carnage since that pair have kept him in power.

Dodgy cabinets are not just a UK phenomenon.