Of course the Blairites are saying Keir Starmer’s shiny new digital ID scheme “doesn’t go far enough.” That’s the point. This is straight out of the old communist playbook of control: float an unpopular policy, then wheel out the grandees to huff and puff that it’s too timid.
The psychology is simple. The public hears both and thinks: Ah, if Blair’s people think it’s too soft, then it can’t be as bad as the critics on the right say. It must be reasonable. That’s the sleight of hand. It’s politics by psychology. Don’t fall for it.
Starmer takes to the Global Progress Action Summit and solemnly announces: “You will not be allowed to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.” Mandatory digital identity for every working adult in Britain. Not a whimper, but a seismic shift in how citizens interact with the state.
And yet, Lord Blunkett, Tony Blair’s former home secretary, pops up on the BBC to sigh that it’s all rather limp. “I’m mystified because we are living in an era of conviction, high-profile, shake-the-tree politics, and this looks like a whimper,” he said. A whimper! As if requiring every worker in the country to carry a state-issued digital pass is somehow a half-measure.
The Blair machine then turns up the volume. The Tony Blair Institute, ever the laboratory of technocratic solutions, insists that digital ID “can and should” be more than just a work permit. Alexander Iosad paints a glowing picture: instant benefits, automatic tax breaks, “issues in your community reported at a tap.” In other words: life on rails, your every entitlement and complaint routed through the state’s watchful servers. Convenience as control.
Inside Starmer’s Cabinet, Darren Jones is even blunter. Digital ID, he says, will be the “bedrock of the modern state.” That’s not an add-on… that’s a foundation. The endgame is clear: not simply to verify who you are when you get a job, but to build an entire system of governance upon the architecture of digital identity.
And yet we’re meant to believe this is a compromise. That the Blairites are disappointed, urging their leader to go further, when in truth this is choreography. Starmer plays the pragmatist. Blair’s people play the restless radicals. Between them, the Overton Window creaks open a little wider.
This is how communist type control is normalised. Step by step. First, ID to work. Next, ID to access services. Later, ID for travel, healthcare, maybe even free expression. Each ratchet softened by the chorus line: not far enough, not far enough.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Labour and the Blairites are not in conflict here. They are co-authors of the same script, architects of the same state-building project. The disagreement is theatre. The destination is the same: a Britain where the citizen is tagged, tracked, and managed “for their own convenience.”
Never forget, they are dancing together, carefully, to convince the public this surveillance state is not too harsh, not too radical, just common sense. And if you believe that, you’re already halfway signed up.
The real whimper is ours… if we sit quietly and let them get away with it. Do NOT let them get away with it. This is a battle we all must fight.
Start by saying no and signing the petition. We do not want the Labour government to introduce Digital ID cards: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194
Claire Bullivant
Nearly 1.7m signatures !