Express – No surprise Tony Blair still envisages such an undemocratic ID system

Yesterday marked 71 years since Sir Winston Churchill scrapped identity cards in a bonfire of wartime controls to ‘set the people free’.

Yet against this legacy of our hard-won freedom, some politicians who lack the British appetite for liberty have since relentlessly rallied to reinstate population ID card systems under various guises – packaging them as a vital solution to fight terrorism, to control immigration, and even to protect us from Covid. Each supposed justification has been proven somewhat false. But, never afraid of making mortal mistakes, one ID card salesman who has confidently pitched all three causes is Sir Tony Blair.

Now he’s back, reviving the same old policy along with his career as a lobbyist (with unknown funding sources) for “global change”.

The latest reason the British population should be barcoded, he claims, is the technological revolution. ID cards can now be digital and biometric, meaning a quick facial recognition scan could unlock masses of government-held data about us, spanning from our income and tax information to health records, our passport, driving license, qualifications, and more. To those of us who don’t want to live in an Orwellian, high-tech surveillance state, this is the reason precisely not to build a digital ID system. Let alone the extraordinary cost to taxpayers, risks of losing millions of personal documents to hacking, the disempowerment of the citizen against the state, and the inevitable impacts of digital exclusion and inequality.

The digital identity-backed database state Sir Tony is describing would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK. It would increase state control over our lives with little benefit to the public – precisely the reasons cited when Blair’s failed ID card scheme was scrapped in 2010.

But, in an increasingly technocratic world, ID cards are the policy that just won’t flush. Among the elites, there is a cross-party consensus and a huge amount of funding supporting invasive population management systems like this, to which our traditional British values of liberty and personal privacy are an obstacle.

Sir Tony has launched his latest lobbying effort with his former opponent Lord Hague who, as the former Leader of the Opposition, consistently voted against Blair’s ID card Bill. Sir Tony today told the BBC that his digital ID proposal should form a “new national purpose” that “goes across party lines” so that “even through changes in government, you’re still in the same direction”.

It’s no surprise that Sir Tony envisages such an undemocratic route to such an undemocratic ID system. No policy is out of reach of the ballot box. Our government changes when we, the public, vote to change it. And the British public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems.

It was a 54-year-old London dry cleaner, Harry Willcock, whose small act of resistance inspired the national movement to revoke British ID cards in 1950. He refused to show a police officer his ID, telling him simply, “I am against this sort of thing,” and later successfully defended himself in court.

One thing Sir Tony and Lord Hague are right about is that we are living through a rapid technological revolution and as the world around is changing politicians need to show leadership. But some things stay the same. And when constantly confronted with plans from the powerful for liberty-eroding digital ID card system, doesn’t it make you proud that the British public are still indeed against this sort of thing?

Express – No surprise Tony Blair still envisages such an undemocratic ID system, says SILKIE CARLO

BBC – Tony Blair and William Hague call for digital ID cards for all

Daily Mail – Campaigners blast Tony Blair’s ‘retrograde’ plan to impose digital ID cards on all Britons, warning it would create a ‘checkpoint society’ and ‘puts people at risk of identity theft and hacking’

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