ID cards are back. No2ID will be back too.
Anyone in the UK will have seen the announcement on Thursday that the government is proposing to bring in a digital ID system. Even usually apolitical people are talking about it.
There are basically three versions of the idea:
- A national population register linked to ID cards
- A national population register linked to biometrics
- A national population register linked to some kind of digital app
There are perfectly good dialectic arguments for this, but, like the arguments for the other Blairite projects of European integration and euthanising the poor, they can't be uttered in polite society.
So what we're left with is rhetorical arguments that are supposed to communicate "I am on board with the establishment's pet projects" dressed up as "here is a logical / factual / scientific / ethical case for the establishment's pet projects". It's an example of Keegan's Seventh Law:
Never attribute to stupidity that which is better explained by insincere in-group signalling.
People who publicly support national population registers in the UK are either insincere or about to get cancelled by both sides. No-one who tries this ends up with their intellectual reputation intact, because the only arguments that wouldn't get them cancelled by both sides are fundamentally intellectually dishonest. It follows that outside the Westminster bubble, which provides to a limited extent a reality distortion field, the only sincere public supporters of ID cards tend to be people who are pretty thick and/or intellectually dishonest.
The best representative of the pro ID card tendency in 2004 era scheme was a voluble blogger, who, shall we say, did not prevail in winning the argument, though he did help discredit his side, and unwisely called for me to be deported on the basis of my opinions ...
No less a figure than Sir Keir Starmer dipped his toe onto the third rail, in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this week:
That was his Birthday Cake Interview. He couldn't explain why employers who are prepared to break the law by not checking a passport wouldn't also avoid checking a digital ID system. Why not?
Anyway - there's a fresh barrel full of fish to be shot. No2ID, who trashed the 2004-era scheme ... will be back.