ID Cards: The Final Straw Of Government Overreach?

Most of us are already proud owners of passports, driving licences, national insurance numbers, bank account details and utility bills as a way of proving who we are. This is normally in response to people and entities who probably should not have access to that information, or for whom having that information is probably not that relevant, but makes things look formal. It also does not prevent money laundering, crime, or anything else it is supposed to. It just racks up hours and money for those in admin / service providers / advisors.

To add to the list of telling people who we really are we now have the prospect of a Brit ID Card.  In fact, it could be a really good idea or would be a really good idea if it replaced everything else that we have, a kind of one stop shop card for everything concept. But this is clearly not going to be the case, even though we have the technology to have our driving license details, passport, national insurance, biometrics and everything else on one particular card, if it was required or wanted.

But of course we are an age of red tape hell aided and abetted by technology and lawyers / accountants, rather than curbed by it. The only thing missing is the conspiracy theorists favourite instrument, the central bank digital currency, something to be used to control how much we spend and when we spend it, and to be used to block spending which is not appropriate according to the law, health or safety, or of course the safety of others. That won’t be long.

Apparently, the Prime Minister is about to announce the introduction of digital cards for all as part of the government fight against illegal immigration. This is even as this same government and previous ones have spent millions if not billions on facilitating illegal immigrants whether illegal or otherwise, and of late paying vast amount of money to house and noourish them. If you are looking for gangs to smash, look no further than HM Government. Therefore, if it is said that ID cards are there to fight against illegal immigration, we can be quite sure that the explanation is anything other than this particular one. But what a great alibi, a bit like the one associated with the Online Safety Bill protecting children.

Indeed, whether you are for against the illegal immigration, you will probably acknowledge that one of the (many?) benefits of it is to allow the facilitation of the so-called black economy, something which is cashless and ID free. It allows for cheap labour to be used in various industries such as hospitality and the building trade as well of course as food delivery. Therefore, it is ironic that a government that is so keen on hailing the contribution that migration makes to the country is actually doing something that would take the edge off one of its main real benefits.

Of course, on the right of politics this initiative will be shut down as something which threaten civil liberties and certainly will not be something which is welcomed as curbing illegal immigration, because it obviously will not. This is especially the case if one believes that the impetus for many who come here (after they have thrown all their ID in the English Channel) is to have the welfare benefits safety net that this country does so well, rather than work in a minimum wage / gig economy, which perhaps many like to think that migrants are coming here for.

All of this leaves us wondering whether if you are a proponent of the David Icke dystopian government control nightmare of the 21st-century that we are allegedly hurtling towards, a very big box has been ticked, something that follows the sinister control freeness of the pandemic, and HMRC using AI to check whether we have actually earned More than we have declared.

Cynics might suggest that we are so near to having all our daily lives probes into and monitored we may as well hand over the keys to everything that we have to a central body. One thing we can be sure of though as this ID malarky is a left leaning initiative, there will be no block in the High Court, the Court of Appeal or Supreme Court, against it instead it will just be waved through. The most we might see is the odd demonstration in central London even though we know that all such exercises are entirely futile in terms of changing government policy.

Nevertheless, full marks to whoever’s idea it was to conflate digital ID cards with illegal immigration, and hence delivering a Trojan Horse type of explanation for something which will undoubtedly be rather more unpopular than the 49% –  51% split that The Telegraph’s obviously not highly representative poll is currently pointing to. The conflation is effectively as convincing as mixing oil and water.

Intuitively, one would have thought that the split would be at least 7030 against digital ID cards and probably 90/10 against amongst Telegraph readers. Perhaps they really believe ID cards would deter immigration. The only way that this could happen is if we were in a “who goes there?” environment, where the police / civil guard could demand to see onc’s papers as in the Second World War with countries under occupation. Somehow, this does not seeem to be a likely scenario in your local High Street. At least one hopes so.