“Sir Keir Starmer is expected to announce plans for a compulsory UK-wide digital ID scheme in a speech on Friday”, reports the BBC.
The prime minister believes it would help crack down on illegal working and modernise the state, according to senior figures in government.
The practicalities of the scheme will be subject to a consultation, which will also look at how to make it work for those without a smartphone or passport.
The previous Labour government’s attempt to introduce ID cards was ultimately blocked by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
But earlier this month, Sir Keir said he thought the debate had “moved on” since then, adding: “We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago”.
“We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago.” So we do, and that means we all have available a variety of independent digital means to prove our identity that are not subject to the danger of putting all our eggs in one government-made basket. Twenty years ago – well, 22 years ago to be precise – I made a post called “A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?” in which I listed some situations in which a law-abiding person could indeed be harmed by having their identity known by local or national government, or by whoever hacks into the government database, or by whoever gets their mate in the police to do a search for them. Has the passage of two decades made any of those scenarios, or the other scenarios suggested in the comments to the post, cease to apply?
Does this mean that ownership of a smartphone will now be compulsory? They have managed to make something much, much worse than a mere ID card.
Luckily, Spanner and his shower of shit will be long gone before this idea will get anywhere. And looking on the bright side, Mr Sir Tony can’t live forever.
I used my passport in a bank only today – as visual I.D. to prove my identity.
And I.D. is also required to vote – as we are now in a low-trust “multi cultural” society (by the way – this casts serous doubts over postal voting – what the Americans call mail-in-ballots).
Will I.D. cards prevent mass immigration? No they will not – as the British establishment do not want to preserve this nation, they wish to destroy this nation. So anyone who claims that I.D. cards will deal with the migrants does not recognize the true nature of the powers that control modern Britain.
As for the long term agenda – it is a lot more radical than I.D. cards.
Very much more radical than I.D. cards.
JohnK
Yesterday I had a telephone call from my internet provider – about updating telephone, television and computer service.
They were astonished that not only do I not own a “smart phone” – I do not own a mobile telephone at all. Which is why they could only telephone me at-home.
“crack down on illegal working”
As “legal working” is not really workable for many low income people, due to “National Insurance” taxes and regulations, “crack down on illegal working” really means “crack down on working”.
We are to be totally dependent on benefits – that is the plan.
What will they do to people who refuse to have one? Fines? Jail?
This doesn’t strike me as the kind of government outrage that should be fought through quiet individual noncompliance.
They’ll just pick you off one by one.
bobby b 9-25-25 6:01 pm
Perhaps “Glávnoye upravléniye ispravítel’no-trudovýkh lageréy” and an Archipelago attached to it. Are they talking about scannable-from-a-distance subcutaneous implants in the future? Or perhaps a set of symbols to be worn on your outer clothing to denote your political status?
Subotai Bahadur
Paul:
I don’t have a smart phone either. I have never felt the need for one. I do have a simple mobile which comes in handy from time to time. That is why I wondered if a condition of British nationality is now going to include possession of a smart phone? I imagine the Tony Blair Institute imagines “everyone” has one, but they do not. Are they to become the unpeople of the new digital gulag?
This has not been thought through at all. It is a panicked move from a dying government desperately trying to find something to announce that they think will be popular. But I think that they will find that the bullshit polls produced by the Tony Blair Institute are as fake as Mr Sir Tony’s smile, which never quite reaches his eyes.
“What will they do to people who refuse to have one? Fines? Jail?”
1) Universal Basic Income. Free money for everyone!
2) Increase taxes by an equivalent amount; most people will need UBI to survive.
3) Link all benefits, including UBI, to your identity card.
Simples!
I don’t carry *any* digital ID around with me. The only ID-adjacent artifact I habitually carry with me if I remember is my driving license, when I am driving, and mainly because it has my emergency contact details taped to the back as the most likely thing somebody would look for on my unconcious body.
Don’t know why they dont just call it the Fabian party and be done with it.
An excellent point Natalie. I have a load of such things and they work for me to get goods and services (or prove my age to the TV!!!*) so one wonders why? We all know don’t we? It is just control for the sake of it.
*And why is that? It wasn’t Sky’s idea was it? Anyone in government who argues it’s for “The Chiiiildreeeen!!!” ought to have theirs sent on an Oldham cab-ride.
I have a vague recollection that back in the Blair / Brown days the Labour government set up, or proposed to set up, some kind of National Child Register with all sorts of details about every child in the Kingdom. But we were reassured that this info would be under super-tight control because it could only be accessed by a small number of people. Just 300,000 or so.
Each additional government promise is a promise of additional government.
We all know how this will work, anyone waving a St. George’s cross will get ID checked, those waving a Palestinian flag will not.
And of course migrants won’t need one, the taxpayers pay their hotel bills and their employer pays cash.
JohnK
Yes Sir – that is the agenda, the international agenda.
Everything is to be electronic – and it will be justified quite easily.
“Why do you want privacy – are you a pedophile? Nothing to hide – nothing to fear!”.
“Why do you want to use cash – are you buying drugs, or (again) buying access to sexually abuse children?”
A “moral panic” will be generated by the international media, and so on.
Agenda 2030.
The objective is tyranny – but it will be, is being, dressed up as “protecting the children” and so on. Just as was done with On Line Safety Bill (now an Act) – and many other measures.
We know what our international rulers want, it has been known for a long time.
They want to stamp their boot down on the face of ordinary persons – and grind us into the dirt for ever.
Nothing. They’ll fine and jail businesses who employ people without checking their papers. It will be, as Herr Starmer said himself, impossible to get a job without it.
Just like, you know, the National Insurance number that we already have. Only that doesn’t work against illegals because they’re handing them out like sweeties. And there’s absolutely nothing to stop them doing the same with this. Oh, they’ll tell you that it’s so much more flexible: they can dole out restricted IDs to immigrants meaning that they can only work for a certain amount of time, or in certain industries, or for certain employers. And if they can do that for them, they can do it for you, too.
San Duncan.
Quite correct Sir.
It will be impossible to have a job, or a bank account, or anything. If a person is outside this system – they will starve.
That has always been the plan.
Even before the computer age – back in the 1970s there was a television series – shown once (never repeated) called “1990” – with a “Department of Public Control” – with people needing I.D. to buy food, and money being electronic Credits.
This has been the agenda for a very long time.
Technocracy – Sir Francis (“New Atlantis”) Bacon, and Henri Saint-Simon would be delighted.
1990. It’s on YouTube!
Can anyone think of a way to prevent extralegal mass immigration without a rigorous national identity system?
(Other than race/religion-based informal vigilanteism.)
ISTM that any nation without such a system will be infested with violent Islamists, CCP thugs, Latin American gangsters, and African/South Asian slaves.
Strict border control.
(ETA: Let me add – I think you fall into the pretext trap with this argument. If there was any possibility that Starmer’s people would be using the ID for such purposes, this might be valid. But – honestly, do you trust them to do this, instead of using it to control YOU?)
This has zilch to do with the influx from abroad and will have precisely zero effect on it.
You can guarantee that this is how it will work:
British citizen: To obtain your digital ID you will be required to present your passport, driving licence, birth certificate, three month’s worth of recent bank statements and utility bills, your ‘birth parents’ maiden name, your ‘birth grandparents’ maiden name, your finger prints, your shoe size, and a live ‘video selfie’ of yourself hopping on one leg while singing the ‘Spitting Image Chicken Song.’
Dinghy arrival: To obtain your digital ID, speak to your activist lawyer to enter a claim that it would be against your human rights to deny you a digital ID just because you can’t prove who you are. Then just make up anything you like.
JMG – yes “1990” is indeed on YouTube, thank you for pointing this out.
Zerren Yeoville – quite so.
Quite the government claims is for the defense of the British people against invaders – will be used against the British people, as the government (the permanent government – the establishment) is on the side of the invaders and has been for many years.
Can anyone think of a way to prevent extralegal mass immigration without a rigorous national identity system?
Sure. Accent. You speak with a native accent, you’re presumptively British, though the authorities can check you out if they wish. But no ID card required.
Speak with a foreign accent, you’re presumptively foreign. And presumptively can be deported. But you can rebut the presumption with evidence of your birth / naturalisation. But the easiest way to be confident is to have an ID card, which the government will issue to those who qualify, and want one.
If you’ve coached yourself really well so that although you’ve lived in Syria all your life, you speak like a native Brit then good luck to you, you’re obviously a hard worker.
Britain did not use to have mass immigration – even though anyone could just get on a ship and come here, there were no real checks on arrival. A few people did just that – such as my great grandfather (a Russian Jew – who just turned up in Victorian London), but not vast numbers of people.
The United States did not use to have mass immigration from Mexico – even though the long border was unguarded and anyone could just walk across.
Then came government benefits (such as Food Stamps in the United States from 1961 – but there are a Legion of other benefits) and Public Services – benefits and Public Services (such as health care) in Britain AND the United States (anyone who thinks the United States is not a Welfare State is, mentally, living back in the 1950s).
And then, after the Welfare State arrived in Britain in the 1940s and in the United States in the 1960s, came mass Third World immigration
The establishment (the media and the education system – and so on), would have us believe that these factors are not connected to mass Third World immigration – and so would “libertarians” funded by Mr Koch, who insist that the mass Third World immigration is in-no-way connected to the arrival of government benefits and Pubic Services.
They-are-lying.
I am aware of the British Aliens Act of 1905. It was not a Victorian measure – Queen Victoria died in 1901.
Note that its justification(at least its official justification) is to prevent people being a burden on the Rates – the Property Tax that went to look after the poor. By modern standards this was not generous (although it is a myth that “everyone was shoved in the Workhouse” – there were twice as many people on “out relief” as under “in relief”) – but it was a problem. A problem made vastly worse by the “reforms” that occurred during the 20th century – under the influence of the Fabians behind the “Minority Report” on the Poor Law – the “Majority Report” being written by people (who had spent their lives helping the poor – with their own money and their own hands) whose intentions were NOT to undermine and destroy society – which has always been the intention of the Fabians and other such groups – who were behind the “Minority Report” – which “Progressive” governments have followed.
No such Poor Law Tax existed in most of Scotland till 1845.
And no such Poor Law Tax existed in much of America.
“Ah America – people could go to the frontier…..”.
There was no “frontier” in France – and they, at that time, had no Poor Law Tax.
Ironically France, which now has the highest government spending in the world, was once a rather limited government nation.
Even in 1914 (contrary to what Hans Hermann Hoppe implies in “Democracy: The God That Failed) Britain and France had much smaller (more limited) governments than Germany and Austro-Hungary.
“What about Russia…..”
O.K. – what about the Ottoman Empire which, contrary to the lies of the modern Western education system, was and-always-had-been an abomination.
Gladstone and John Bright were telling the truth about the deep evil of the Ottoman Empire – anyone who thinks Russia was as bad in that period, is quite wrong.
JMG – September 26, 2025 at 5:16 pm:
‘1990’ was also adapted into two paperback novels and, just as the TV series wasn’t repeated, they’re quite hard to find today (and quite pricey too).
ISBNs are 9780722140093 and 9780722140017.