A state run digital ID is the last thing the government should be worrying about and spending our money on. It was not in their Manifesto and there is no surge of requests for such a new intrusion into our lives.
We want the government to keep their promise to smash the gangs. Requiring law abiding people already here to have digital IDs will not stop criminals ignoring the rules and living a life of crime . People in Northern France are not going to say if we have digital ID they will not come. They are already coming here illegally and getting jobs for cash, showing they are happy to break the rules. The law abiding already have a National Insurance number, a driving licence, a passport to travel and benefits and pensions accounts but they do not stop the illegals. They prefer to come with no ID and then get access to UK services and accommodation which we grant them.
Presumably new arrivals on the boats would be issued with their own digital ID anyway. They can still make up their history if we allow people to stay here who have destroyed or lost their passports . They can tell us what needs saying to qualify for whatever the rules require for admission.
Some say it will help the police track down illegals on the streets. If we are all required to carry digital ID with us and can be stopped to find out who we are there will be plenty of hard cases where someone’s mobile phone has no battery charge or has been temporarily mislaid or left at home. Criminals asked to produce digital ID can always think of a reason why not, promise to attend a police station later, and go missing. Some will have good fabricated ID.
When it comes to illegal working the government has an enforcement problem, not an ID problem. Everyone legally here and wanting to work has a unique National Insurance Number. No-one is meant to get a job without declaring their number and paying National Insurance where due. The state has the powers to prosecute employers who break these rules. Why would it be any different if instead of needing an NI number you needed a digital ID? There would still be rogue employers who need uncovering and charging.
Government handling of large computer schemes should leave Ministers nervous and the public worried. The Post Office spent a fortune of taxpayers money on a computer system that sent some of their best people to jail on false allegations. The NHS has spent much money on new systems for booking appointments and keeping in touch with patients, often making it more difficult to get a meeting with a GP. Pity the taxpayer with a project on this scale.
The digital ID is a solution in search of a problem to solve. It is a hammer to our freedoms missing the nails of illegal migration and street crime. The government will find there is plenty of opposition as it uses this distraction to try to divert attention away from their failure to smash the gangs and to grow the economy
September 27, 2025
Good morning.
Digital ID – A solution in search of a problem.
Just deport all foreign criminals and lock up all the UK ones for long periods of time if you want to solve crime. If not, stop wasting money on something that we will have to pay for and do not need.
September 27, 2025
Another step to Agenda 30. Remorslesly the journey continues.
September 27, 2025
Just have policies that deter crime, deters living off benefits and encourages hard work and saving. So the complete reverse of what we have had since Thatcher was kicked out – even she did far too little. In fact the rot started as far back as Attlee and Churchill (post Attlee) did very little to undo the socialist damage Attlee did! He said some of the right things but did rather little at this point!
September 27, 2025
As soon as Starmer declared that the mandatory digital ID was only going to be used to stop illegal migrant workers …..I thought of the title of SirJ book ”We don’t believe you”
Reply Indeed. Soon after his unbelievable remarks his Chief Minister Darren Jones in No 10 said the idea was as a universal passport to public services to facilitate unspecified reforms of those services.
September 27, 2025
I bet one Anthony Blair is feeling rather happy at the moment because this idea was always something he pushed. I do wonder just how much influence Blair still has over Sir Keir and Labour.
My cynical side thinks that introducing the concept now is a distraction technique to take attention away from scandals and the fact that the boats are still arriving.
It is my opinion, that the introduction of digital IDs is just the first step along the road to social control and an authoritarian state.
September 27, 2025
Remember the total loss of our freedom under draconian lockdown measures. Governments are not to be trusted – no ID.
September 27, 2025
Maybe the potential acceptance of this monstrous proposal by some people reflects a drastic gap between English common law and France’s aptly-titled ‘Napeolonic law’. We did have problems when we were in the EU and some MPs raised principled objections to the legal aspects of membership.
In this country, we are legally born free. So the very idea of ID cards and ‘papers, please’ should be an abomination. It reverses the burden of proof. My last MP agreed with this.
The EU once came up with a so-called ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights’, only for British people to point out loudly that we already had them, by virtue of living in England or Wales. N.B. I have little knowledge of Scots law.
My question is: In extremis, why can’t we apparently enforce the extra constitutional protections we have in England and stop unconstitutional ideas like compulsory ID cards [or the same on a ‘smartphone’]? ‘COVID’ came and went and we were nearly as imprisoned in our homes as French or German people. The judiciary seemed to be captured by the establishment.
September 27, 2025
+1
Not only are we born free but any slave to get to the British Empire was freed.
We should have the same law not and abolish ‘modern slavery’ making it a capitol offence for any person in the country to treat any other as a slave.
September 27, 2025
Correct
September 27, 2025
Indeed see David Starkey’s excellent video:-
“Blair did more harm to Britain than two world wars.” David Starkey
“Blair did more harm to Britain than two world wars.” David Starkey … David Starkey on lawless Britain and the myth of multiculturalism.
It is a habit of government to force everyone to do the same things it wastes £billions:- all new houses to have disabled access ramps, disabled larger bathroom access, electric car chargers, heat pumps, over the top insulation, people must have EV or hybrid cars, OTT fire controls… These things may be needed and perhaps even even are sensible investments for some people but a complete and pointless waste of money for most others! Let people decide themselves what they want. Not ne size for all idiots in government who have never even visited the property and know nothing about the users needs or finances!
September 27, 2025
Apparently T.Blair is being proposed as head of an interim authority to run Gaza after peace is achieved. The man who caused more chaos in the area than any other PM.
September 27, 2025
The man in search of hero status. Remember a war in search of the non-existent weapons of mass destruction and causing the deaths of at least 100,000. More than 100,000 sacrificed for the sake of ego and dreamt up self-esteem . The aftermath led to ‘not me Guv’ I’m innocent’. The usual Socialist Lawyer get out.
If you keep doing the same things is it a surprise you always get the same outcome. The UK so-called Workers Party that has never had a someone that has worked at the helm. Surely all these big Union Sponsor can see a fraud when it is under their noses.
September 27, 2025
‘When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died’ or when Blair become the Middle East peace envoy!
September 27, 2025
I think it’s a great idea to send Blair (and Greta) to Gaza.
September 27, 2025
I have had to put not only disabled toilets into a refurbished shop, but the passageways to the toilets are ‘disabled width’, however the 3 accesses to the shop are less than the current disabled access width, so nobody requiring the width to access the toilets can get into the shop.
The planners told me ‘two wrongs don’t make a right, so I asked them if they are excluding those who can only be pushed about in beds form society. Beds can’t access my fantastically expensive disabled toilets, one of which has baby changing facilities too.
September 27, 2025
I have not yet been forced to put baby changing facilities into the men’s toilets, but am anticipating that and leaving space to install.
No wonder the west is known as ‘the Empire of Sodom’.
September 28, 2025
Why was Blair given a knighthood exactly?
Sir Ernest Shackleton had to endure months stuck in ice on his ship in the Antartic, then more months on perilous ice flows, then perilous journey to and landing on the (Labrador?) Island and then 2 days later perilous journey to the other island (forget name) and then trying to perilously land on it and then the perilous journey across that island by foot ..
September 27, 2025
‘Where are your papers? was the familiar phrase in the old war films.
It’s another excuse to gain control over the population and intrude on our freedom.
Illegal immigration is a useful cover story – but it’s fooling nobody.
September 27, 2025
The Labour Party conference will be interesting.
This issue will probably arise. Starmer also intends to reclaim patriotism from Reform/the far right (or words to that effect):-
‘ “I have to say to all of those attending conference, this is a real opportunity for us to make our argument about patriotic national renewal, to own patriotism, to define it for what it is,” he said.’
This should go down as well as his famous claim of working class roots from his toolmaker father.
September 27, 2025
@Peter – the Party that flies the Palestinian Flag and tears down the Union & English Flags. A PM and mostly absent leader that is on record in the Media as saying he prefers the Socialist WEF and its World rule doctrine over defending the UK and it Democracy. A man that ensures we have a Two Tier Legal System, any one that is not of a Marxist/Socialist persuasion is branded a right wing thug and must be locked up for having a view. The list is endless, but he has a preference for a two tier World according to his own personal opinion, and an equal and a fair society is not permitted.
September 27, 2025
To be fair Starmer prefers the rainbow flag to the Pakistani flag.
September 27, 2025
Will the Labour Conference hear the “island of strangers” phrase I wonder?
September 27, 2025
That is what Africans heard all the time, they had to carry papers at all times in Apartheid South Africa. Part of the oppression introduced by the Afrikaans Government which Smuts had to keep jailed in Koffiefontein during the war etc ed.
September 27, 2025
I favour the view this is all about the EU telling Starmer what to do.
September 27, 2025
I have just signed the petition against ID cards. Votes are currently over 1.566 million. This is my way of registering opposition pending the next opportunity to vote in an election.
Reply Yes please all sign this. I have done so.
September 27, 2025
Found @ https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194?ref=ed_direct
Now past 1.6 million (c. 08.15 hrs.), so about 1 million added in 24 hours.
September 27, 2025
Now past 1,920,100 million as at 17.45 hrs
September 28, 2025
now 2.3 million
September 28, 2025
Kemi is, as usual, still on the fence on this I understand! As she is on Net Zero, ECHR, energy policy, immigration levels…
Reply This site mainly discusses government policy, not Opposition parties. You should at least read Opposition statements of policy before sounding off with wrong views. The Conservatives under Badenoch have committed to a major reduction in legal migration and an end to illegal, to removing ECHR and UN Treaty law that stops us doing this, to accepting the 2050 NZ targets are unattainable, to reversing damaging NZ policies like oil and gas bans and petrol car ban in 2030 , putting in much tougher provisions on indefinite leave to remain, moving changes to Labour’s Immigration law which would have stopped the boats etc.
September 27, 2025
Agreed. This was an idea first mooted by the malevolent ex-PM Tony Bliar – the man who gave us the student debt system, which – after mission creep – has inflicted hundreds of thousands of intelligent people with about £150billions of lifelong debt. Not to mention allowing his Chancellor Brown to sell off the nation’s gold
No government IT system or upgrade has ever succeeded as planned, with £billions in cost overruns and years of delay
Bliar’s proposed system involved personal data held on a physical card with a chip. The holder had no access and so could not check that the data held was accurate.
Keeping vast amounts of personal data on a new, huge government database will be a magnet for hackers from N Korea, Russia, China and organised crime groups. Of which the UK has many
Digital ID cards will not stop the boat people or illegal immigration. Mission creep will mean that dozens of government departments, civil servants, HMRC and electoral politicians etc will demand access.
This is a really bad idea which was not proposed in Labour’s election manifesto. Everybody other than Starmer’s supporters will oppose it.
September 27, 2025
The student debt system was actually created by the Conservatives in the early 1990s when they froze maintenance grants and introduced maintenance loans. Within a few years they then broke every promise about how their new system would operate. Labour then extended that to cover tuition as well once they got into power (after saying they would not). And, we then had the LibDems in 2010.
Every party of government has shown that, when it comes to university and student financing, they don’t keep their promises.
September 27, 2025
The mistake was originally Wilson’s, in doubling the number of universities without ensuring the talent was there to staff them. Major made it worse by saying half the population should go to university. Blair then put that into practice. No government can give that number of students the free fees, grants, and high academic standards that the original students got.
September 27, 2025
The problem is that most of the degrees are virtually worthless, in largely worthless subjects taught to largely unsuitable students – often ones who clearly did not even understand their A levels or similar (circa 50% with D,E grades or worse). You are doing them no good awarding them a duff degree, 50k of debt plus interest and 3 years loss of salary!
September 28, 2025
Great comment. Sad situation this.
September 27, 2025
“..Starmer’s supporters..” – and those would be only the couple of dozen Ministers who know any other prime minister would not appoint them I suspect.
September 27, 2025
@SG. Supercomputers are predicted to become 100x more powerful within 5 years. Hackers will have a field day.
September 27, 2025
The cost of transistors and memory has gone down by circa one trillion time over the last 45 years. Nearly halving each year. This process is also speeding up as the new IT (hardware and software) become a new tool to help create the next next generation IT and so on! Exponential growth racing away!
September 27, 2025
I’m sure it will be lucrative to own a number of digital IDs, and all the criminals will arrive here with several in place, with associated bank accounts and payments from every government scheme.
September 27, 2025
The temptations for totalitarians to make use of the data and analyse it alongside data on mobile phone location and facial recognition, electronic payments, health data, etc. mean that the risks are at least as great from those in government and administration.
September 27, 2025
Don’t worry Sir JR, it will not happen (under Starmer) The man is a fool who thinks it’s us that are the fools. The opposition parties will all vote against, as will a significant portion of his own rabble. He will be forced into another humiliating U-turn. Though all of this depends on him still being PM in 2029, which is looking increasingly unlikely.
September 27, 2025
There is nothing so dangerous as a fool with power.
September 27, 2025
Indeed and we have so many of them Ed Miliband, Lammy, Two Tier Kier, Streeting, B. Phillipson, Evette Cooper Balls, Hermer…
September 27, 2025
As you say we already have general use of IDs – the most widespread being the mobile phone, except that won’t prevent the illegals as theHome Office hands them out like confetti. The heart of the issue is trust and I suggest most people simply do not trust the government.
I imagine the conservative politicos will be rubbing their hands with glee over this continual accumulation of malicious idiocy by the starmer gangsters. No doubt they are thinking that the worse it gets the more likely they are to get back in power, to reclaim their rightful position if and when there is another general election.
I voted conservative for 50 years in local and general elections – I will not do the same again and I suspect there are many like me.
PS You have made this easier for me John as you no longer stand while your replacement has been invisible and the libdem incumbent is useless.
September 27, 2025
Voting intention :
Agreed. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity and I’m not there yet. Even a change of election time policies or perceived policies is insufficient. There would need to be a complete change of personnel to ensure the promises are implemented. I don’t want another PM May or PM Johnson.
September 28, 2025
though I am not convinced a simple change of personnel would be enough as the issue is ingrained attitude and the whole premis of the Conservatives is ostensibly to preserve the establishment.
September 27, 2025
I imagine the argument for doling out free phones is as tracking devices without the stigma of an ankle tag. They might also collect data on who the holder contacts, although it doesn’t seem this is used in evidence for asylum hearings. Perhaps GCHQ glean enough to know who should be added to their watch list, now too big to monitor. It will fall to AI to do that, in much the style of the film Minority Report. Perhaps it is already monitoring your tweets – for balance.
September 27, 2025
Mark:
Switching the ‘phone off? VPN calls? Sim swapping?
September 28, 2025
An active phone has three IDs – MSISDn which is your phone number (associated with the subscriber and operator), the IMSI pm the SIM which identifies the device to the network and identifies the home network. Finally the the device itself has a hardware ID which is visible to the network and so trackable, even without the SIM in.
Switching the phone off would work but then it isn’t usable as an ID or comms device though disabling the cellular radio and relying on the WiFi connection would probably do the trick, but then could fail ID checking with legitimate operators.
VPN would only block traffic not the device’s location and would doubtless be banned or red flag the device/user in Labour’s brave new state
September 27, 2025
Just signed the petition against ID cards.
NO to digital ID!!!
September 27, 2025
The Authoritarians in the British Establishment want a Chinese-style Social Credit System to control the entire population.
It has nothing to do with stopping the criminal invasion. They could do that far more cheaply by buying 100,000 tents and several miles of razor wire.
September 27, 2025
Some talk of Blair’s son being lined up to spear head the software/production of ID cards. Even so expecting this project to be completed by 2029 suggests that the boats will continue to arrive until that date- laughable. With the IT failures mentioned dont forget that the BBC wrote of £100m on an IT project.
September 27, 2025
I wholly agree with your brilliant article, Sir John.
Some years ago, as part of a friend’s ongoing training on fraud, the police officer doing the update, said there were more NI cards in circulation than there were population. Suggesting there were illegal workers with fake ones around even then.
September 27, 2025
Digital ID’s to stop illegal people trafficker?
Entering the UK illegally is already a criminal offence. The flaw is the UK’s legislators, they have then created laws and facilitated UK Taxpayer money to ensure those Laws cant be upheld. It is not Lawyers paid by the incoming criminals, or their home nation that is funded this illegal action, it is the UK’s own Legislators its own MP’s that are fighting the Laws they are responsible for. It is possible then to suggests it is the UK Parliament that is funding people traffickers.
The Flaw is those in Parliament sitting on their hands and refusing to ensure the people that have empowered and paid them are kept safe. The Nightmare could be stopped instantly, today if MP’s just got their minds end engaged and did their job, they are the Legislators, the Law makers, no one else.
The so-called Digital ID is in political speech the ‘dead cat on the table’ the throw away to deflect the truth from why they are failing.
September 27, 2025
The deflection from failure, the attack on other groups is only required because of the neglect in duty of those empowered and paid to do a job yet refuse. The only way to challenge the likes of Reform it to start working for those that elected you and not your ego, and put aside the almost religious political ideology that has nothing to do with anything other than personal ego and self esteem. If Parliament and its Government nurtured an economy, supported democracy and the rule of law, this discussion couldn’t exist.
Having a Socialist WEF supporting Uniparty swanning around the corridors of power is about destruction not advancement, not a tomorrow
September 27, 2025
So, even if Starmer does think this idiotic scheme will have any effect on the boats or ‘smashing the gangs’ it seems he is quite prepared to wait until 2029 for it to be implemented and do its work. Millions more will come before that. It’s the lies I can’t stand about politicians and once the leader has spouted it, all his sheep will keep going on air to repeat the same old nonsense. They really do despise us.
September 27, 2025
”They really do despise us”
Giving away Chagos Islands – Not in manifest
Recognising Palestine – Not in manifesto
Mandatory ID cards – Not in manifesto
September 27, 2025
Surely going to have to give the £2 Trillion to ‘Palestine’ in case a Court somewhere rules that we owe compensation, else the Chagos deal is revealed as a fraud.
September 27, 2025
It surely is a fraud! What other possible reason?
September 27, 2025
Couldn’t agree more. One’s natural inclination is to think that as a law abiding citizen, I have nothing to worry about but the 12,800 people arrested for on/line comments (some of which may justify arrest) does suggest that this and future governments could use this tool to limit free speech and freedoms of movement as well as coerce people into certain behaviour. The real worry is the track record of government in recent years. Not only the Post Office scandal but utter mess they made of COVID vaccine passes that were used to limit movement during the pandemic fiasco. Vast sums of money were wasted on incompetence in this respect.
September 27, 2025
I don’t and never will own a mobile phone. I am simplifying my affairs to the bare bones, so that I have as little contact with Government as possible. I am cutting my income to state pension only. I will live on offshore capital, so I can’t be ‘debanked’.
I will NOT fund this incompetent British political class.
I will NOT accept a digital ID – has the government not just ‘lost’ millions of digital records to who knows whom?
If necessary I will leave.
September 27, 2025
The government should be enforcing the laws it already has. Impose massive fines on employers who hire illegal workers. This will soon stop the practice. Stop councils like Wolverhampton issuing bogus taxi driver licenses. We are seeing many of these taxis now in the north of England. Crack down on the money laundering Turkish barbers and nail bars. Police the fast food delivery companies that allow workers to fraudulently use other people’s identities.
There is so much that can be done within our existing laws without imposing yet another ID on the law-abiding British people that can be easily bypassed. We know that mission creep will occur, and soon we will live in a dystopian society where credit scoring will impede our freedoms.
September 27, 2025
There should be no ‘illegal workers’ to hire.
September 27, 2025
The money would be better spent on secure tented encampments for illegal migrants and building more prisons.
September 27, 2025
Agree
September 27, 2025
Well said SirJ …..it would be interesting for our government to produce three sets of figures to highlight the illegal workers numbers
(1) Number of current (UK born) workers by National Insurance number
(2) Number of current (Foreign born) workers by National Insurance number
(3) Number of current (Foreign born) workers without National Insurance number ie Illegal
September 27, 2025
They can’t because they have issued volumes more NS numbers than there are people in the country.
September 27, 2025
An ID card to be able to work legally in the U.K.? What’s the disadvantage for an illegal immigrant?
September 27, 2025
What a pathetic PM and Government. The only way to stop illegal immigration is by getting tough, stopping and turning around the boats, and then returning anyone who gets through. If France refuses to accept them, take away a fishing license for every illegal immigrant. Stop all payments, and if necessary, sink the French boats accompanying the dinghies. Stop Border Force vessels and the RNLI from collecting them from the channel.
Stop all legal aid, stop all benefits immediately.
Digital ID cards will do nothing to stop the flow, and the PM knows that. He is a weak, indecisive figure in office, but not in power. This one needs a major citizens’ revolt, and I have also signed the petition.
September 27, 2025
He was apparently not indecisive when the £740k donation was spent and not declared. Surely this ‘breaks the rules’ and the one thing Starmer asserted was that he abided by the rules ….
September 27, 2025
CAGW is a hoax to justify Net Zero a device for population control through impoverishment, the rationing of energy, food and travel, electrification and carbon credits using digital ID and currency.
September 27, 2025
“AI Overview
CAGW, or Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, is a term used by climate change deniers and skeptics, not in the scientific community, to criticize or dismiss established climate science.”
The trouble with AI is it can be bought by the climate alarmist con merchants like the BBC!
September 27, 2025
Wikipedia:
“A statue of George Orwell by the British sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled on 7 November 2017 outside Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC, in London. The wall behind the statue is inscribed with George Orwell’s words “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.
Since 2018 a BBC director of news and current affairs has made the decision to no longer allow reports on or even allow discussions with climate sceptics to be aired. It is a national disgrace that a country that calls itself a democracy allows the BBC, the national broadcaster, to shut down all debate about CAGW and Net Zero
September 27, 2025
This labour ‘government’ have gone from disappointing, to incompetent, to shameful, to EVIL in record time.
Do Not Comply !!!!
September 27, 2025
All this will do is inconvenience the law abiding, employees and employers.
It doesn’t even sound good so the government gets nothing from it for our woes.
September 27, 2025
Like JLR and M&S it will be hacked and sold, ransomed.
September 27, 2025
I agree John the D ID will not stop the boats
I am still getting a very strong feeling the government is not serious about controlling immigration
Controlling immigration is been driven by Reform
September 27, 2025
Why can’t we have an ID card that entitles one to use the NHS ? Anyone who does not have one should be turned away from NHS unless they can prove they have travel insurance. National Health presently I’d the INTERNATIONAL HEALTH.
Reply I have an NHS card but never need to show it. Anyone in the country can go to A and E and claim emergency treatment and this will not change. Foreigners getting non urgent treatment are meant to pay.Conservative ministers tried to get this enforced but many hospitals declined to invoice them. I raised this regularly as an obvious source of revenue. The UK paid big bills sent by EU countries for Brits getting treatment on the continent.
September 27, 2025
250 smartphone stolen every day in the UK
27% of UK smartphone users face network outages at least monthly
100% of the black-market illegal workers use fake ID
Digital ID will be used to control the honest rule abiding people
September 27, 2025
…and how many large companies have been hacked recently ….I wouldn’t trust our government to keep my phone, its data or their own database safe …
September 28, 2025
so profits from jaguar land rover are privatised, but losses are nationalised, it all sounds so familiar. indian owned, it should be the indian government bailing them out. JLR have screwed up with crap IT and infrastructure security, not helped by mass import of cheap IT workers from India. lots of jaguar production takes place outside the uk now, why is it the UK government bailing them out. massive guarantees given to a company which has screwed up its electric car strategy, its IT execution. this is a disgrace to the ordinary British taxpayer. what clowns our own ruling class are.
September 28, 2025
895 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 27th September from France… They’ll never use a digital ID