Digital ID is neither benign nor liberating

NEVER having lived under an authoritarian Police State it may be difficult to recognise why we wouldn't want to.

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A reading of history can help: Stalin's Gulags; the overnight disappearances of millions across South American countries during various fascist regimes; Hitler's mass killings of trades unionists, the disabled, gypsies, gays, Trans-people, socialists and finally Jews... why would anyone willingly accede to totalitarianism?

Signals of authoritarian control should raise our hackles. The loss of all personal agency, subjection to discrimination and torture without any right to appeal, mass incarceration these are all potentialities we must collectively guard against.

Little wonder that in the first three days after its launch, the petition to Parliament opposing Starmer's compulsory "Do not introduce Digital Identity Cards" gained over two million signatures last weekend.

In our rapidly polarising society the old parties of Tory and Labour smelling of rot both "Left" and "Right" appear to be opposing ID cards. The "Middle", those who afford European holidays and want their privileges to be preserved at all costs, quite like the idea.