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Let us
not have sloppy democracy. The scale of the deception in the budget is a vote
of no confidence issue.
Any introduction of encompassing digital ID should be followed by a referendum.
A party would have to call for one as part of its general election platform. It would transform its support upward.
Should digital ID limp on, the referendum result would be a Brexit-like mandate to undo the excesses of the government that introduced it.
That might be especially useful as a unifying factor to a coalition government.
Any country that
proposes introducing digital ID should be cognisant of the potential political
implications.
*****
The trials for digital ID were undertaken in former conflict
zones like Georgia and Bosnia and paid for by the U.K. government. This is not
a good sign for its use in Britain. It needs to be kept away from places where
groups peacefully contest aspects of affiliation - N.I., Scotland and
Wales to begin with - and where digital ID could sow division. Digital ID will
remove effective power from devolved national assemblies and concentrate it in
London.
Digital ID is a strikingly
un-British cultural idea. This can doubtless be expanded upon at length at
election time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has already set out in a video some of the aspects of how British political culture is different.
Others point out how digital identity is a tired World Economic Forum fantasy of the divorced-from-reality ultra-elite.
It is subservience to other people's ideas.
Fortunately, the electorate has already made up its mind, an unprecedented six months out, to turn the May 2026 council elections into a trial referendum on digital ID. Councillors are already passing resolutions opposing digital ID to protect their positions.
*****
(YouTube screenshot)
I tend to give the founders of tech companies and politicians the benefit of the doubt as they are individuals entitled to a vision but not so much to the systems and organisations they produce.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, and increasingly elsewhere, tech companies have suppressed the chance that the collective view can prevail by atomising society .... and because many are run by people who do not particularly like people.
If you like, there is an element of sociopathy - or just attempts to retreat from the physical world, which is not digital at all, and to eliminate negotiation between sentient beings in favour of mediated screen-based relations.
Britain's competitive advantage since at least 1650 has lain in the individuality of the people it has produced, with the peculiarities of an island nation protecting creativity and ingenuity.
An entrepreneurship starting from individuals and small business also propelled it forward commercially, continually renewed because the most successful retired into the aristocracy, if they could, where a healthy suspicion of trade values dominating existed.
Monopoly was frowned upon and continually undermined by new competitors.
Most openings for this entrepreneurship have been destroyed since 1997, mainly by government. Britain is increasingly commercially uncompetitive but not without hope.
If digital ID is adopted it will turn Britain into just another nation of about 70 million people. It will largely crush individuality which does depend on privacy - and the ability to reinvent and not be bound by the past - to a fair degree.
British prosperity and individuality demand a step away from screen dominance, to have unique features and competitive advantages that mark them out.
Bar some advantages that it is hard to eliminate - the English language, possession of nuclear weapons and the island geography - the monopolies and oligarchies of the tech world, from wherever they hail, will clean up following the adoption of encompassing digital ID turning Britain into a vassal state amongst many.
The time of this government reminds one much of that of Jim Callaghan, except that that one produced much individuality.
THE NEW BREXIT: OPPOSITION TO DIGITAL ID
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Did Neville Chamberlain and Sir Horace Wilson really know what they were doing despite some idealism? So it is with digital ID.
This is the only issue which unites every segment of British society in opposition - and 13 British political parties in expressions of opposition. The politicians and advisers who advocated it were naive.
It is the constitutional issue that invites a referendum to reverse because something can be done about it readily, unlike other political topics of the day.
Let us not kid ourselves that the divided cabinet is the entity in charge of this policy.
No disrespect intended but Estonia is the only nation in the EU that is not fully sovereign because it has digital ID.
Google and Apple could switch off operating system functionality for Android and IOS and the country would have difficulty operating at all because it depends on digital ID.
There are circumstances where the EU could request this.
The U.K. does not have digital autonomy as it is but it does have sovereignity.
(YouTube screenshot 4 December 2025)
Remember the shiny beads settlers brought to exchange with resident peoples for lands?
First the traders like the East India Company came, then the loss of independence.
Digital ID is a bauble of minimal value brought by the tech industry in exchange for national independence. Digital ID is the biggest threat to Britain's independence since the Battle of Britain (peace in our time 2.0). It is surrender already started by naive politicians looking at the shine.
As Britain has no data company of note, it would be ironic, but nonetheless unpleasant, if the 'New Labour data faction' in government gave the design of the scheme, and data processing, to the Americas and India to do, places where the British carried beads to.
The chief of Meta did express a preference for corporations replacing states.
Then, after all, we all have experienced, when we have talked to telecom providers' call centres abroad, how our personal and other data is, not so mysteriously, used for scam calls or worse, a few days later.
Whatever the contract provisions, once data is stored, or even located temporarily, abroad, it is not under the control of the government and within the jurisdiction of its laws.
(YouTube screenshot) NHS data is like the contents of your recycling bin - theoretically valuable material but in reality contaminated and data-poisoned rubbish
Incapacity best sums up the government's abilities in tech. The failed NHS IT system and the aborted ID card are estimated to have wasted the taxpayer £12 billion under New Labour.
Remember the useless and chaotic collection of data by the DHSS' Test and Trace costing further billions?
Tax rises in the budget will raise a furore nearly as big as that over digital ID but not as persistent, because the latter, like the poll tax, has been conceived by advisers insufficiently in the real world to register that a 'universal' idea will not get universal support. The political damage will be greater than that for the poll tax and last for longer. A governing party that passes the legislation will never be re-elected.
This is fine for plants but is it the right approach for humans? Then if applied to your dog, what has it got to do with anyone?