The ID cards disaster is another sign that Starmer has lost it

Keir Starmer’s new plans on mandatory digital ID were only announced last Friday – and yet two days later, on the first day of Labour’s conference, they were everywhere. Activists leafleting those entering the secure zone had already printed leaflets against the plans. The “No Food, No Farmers” protest outside the event had dozens of smartly-printed “No To Digital ID” placards in the crowd. More than one attendee who had arrived by taxi said their driver had railed against the proposals for their entire journey. 

These might be dismissed as conference froth, or a few dozen very committed activists, were it not for the extraordinary rush of signatures against the proposal on the official UK parliament petitions site. Since Friday, a “do not introduce Digital ID cards” petition leapt from a little over 100,000 signatures to 2.4 million. On Sunday evening, it was attracting 15,000 signatures an hour – while the next most-popular petition garnered fewer than 500.

With the issue of digital ID, the government has stepped on a political landmine – apparently without the slightest sense that it was doing so. What is particularly odd is that the group of voters it has most likely aggrieved with the policy is exactly the ones it was hoping would like it.

Keir Starmer personally announced on Friday that the government would introduce digital IDs, and that these would be mandatory for anyone entering employment in the UK – tying the policy to the government’s efforts to show it is tough on immigration, and to fend off Reform.

This largely came as a shock to the team who had been working on digital ID, which until that moment had been conceived as a largely low-profile effort to unify government data systems and sharing, in order to make it easier to access public services. The rationale for the project had been making it easier to book GP appointments or similar services – meaning people would opt in to the project when they saw its benefits. It had not been conceived of as a high-profile, let alone flagship, policy, and it was not primarily aimed at tackling illegal workers.

According to insiders, No. 10’s decision to make digital ID mandatory and to tie it to the migration issue came at the last minute, as part of a scrabble for pre-conference announcements. The launch fell apart almost immediately on contact with reality – employers already have a legal duty to make sure their staff have a right to work, which is already enforced by them asking for ID. 

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Ministers were left unable to answer why changing the type of ID they should ask for would radically fix the problem. Within hours, several abandoned No.10’s new rationale for the ID scheme, and reverted to promising it would improve public services.

But the big miss was failing to recognise the anti-government streak uniting many Reform voters – and many voters beyond them, too. There is a wide conspiratorial streak among these voters, who still feel aspects of the Covid response were engineered to attack civil liberties – among these voters, fury at “vaccine passports” or “contact tracing” is still real. By making digital ID a major issue, Starmer has reawakened this coalition.

Last week, there was a major fracture in the relationship between Boris Johnson and Reform. Nigel Farage’s frequent use of the term “Boriswave” to describe a recent influx of immigration had enraged Johnson, who had come out swinging in an interview with The Sun.

Starmer has reunited the two, who are now singing from the same hymn sheet about the evils of mandatory digital ID. Similarly, a week ago, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey was trying to swing his party away from its traditional civil libertarian roots into supporting some version of digital ID – but by making it mandatory and tying it to immigration, Starmer has forced a u-turn. The Lib Dems are now against it, too.

Polling shows that ID cards are nominally somewhat popular among the British public, but this hides a significant fact – those who support them barely care about the issue, and hold their opinion fairly lightly. The hardcore that oppose them care a great deal, and are very loud about it. These are exactly the kind of issues that cause huge political noise and huge political headaches.

Starmer has tied what was supposed to be a quiet series of improvements to digital public services to the most contentious political issue moving. He has done so by promising it will help tackle illegal working – a claim even his own ministers don’t find credible. 

He has missed the fact that the voters this was supposed to appeal to – the Reform-curious – are the ones most likely to hate digital ID. He overshadowed the announcement of the “Pride in Place” £3.5 billion fund by doing so. 

And he has set up the government for a months-long voluble public row over an issue that most regular voters barely care about at all. Worst still, almost everyone in Labour knows it, too – conference is full of people literally and metaphorically sinking their heads into their hands over the issue.

As one delegate said to his companion on Sunday afternoon, loudly enough to be clearly audible 20ft away in a crowded hall, “this digital ID stuff… it’s just fuck-up after fuck-up at the moment”.