Leading education policy researchers argue that policy is best understood as a process of contestation and struggle. This theory is particularly convincing at a time when youth workers and young people are protesting against student fees, spending cuts and youth club closures, and while services for young people are debated by a parliamentary select committee. In this context the relative lack of controversy over the Coalition Government’s ‘new idea’ for youth work is interesting. This article explores the National Citizen Service through discussion of its political context, the process of its production, how language is used to describe and support it, and how it may be contested in practice. It concludes that policy processes can involve silences as well as struggle and contestation.