Keir Starmer, "When we were in the EU we could return asylum seekers back to France and to other EU countries" - Brexit took away this right

'Rather than addressing the fundamental problems with existing verification systems, the Britcard threatens to digitise and amplify the very hostile environment policies that created these problems in the first place' blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

Because what that also does, is give people an ID they can also travel with. What is the point of having a separate ID when you still need a passport to travel? People point to the EU as some shining example of efficiency, and all I see is pointless duplication. EU folk need TWO IDs not just one.

Keir Starmer is asked how digitial IDs will cut down on people working illegally. He can't say.

The British attitude to ID cards should not be underestimated.

Rod Liddle would have heard Millwall fans singing songs about gassing Jews for many, many years. He may well have sung them himself given his racist proclivities.

So, Sunday Times runs with latest poll showing Farage winning if there was an election now. But makes NO mention of Reform’s collusion with Russia. And this is how democracy gets beaten to death in the dark. Voters are not being told the truth. Reform is given the stage but is NEVER held to account.

One other negative side effect of Labour’s ID card plan: it helps Reform continue the illusion that they’re a ‘freedom loving’ and ‘libertarian’ party, when they’re quite the opposite.

Oh god. Starmer is now saying that the left 'got it wrong' on immigration because he chatted to a random bigot in Oldham 10 years ago. When is this idiot going to learn? That sucking up to the Far Right only enables them further.

Former Reform UK leader Nathan Gill has pleaded guilty to eight counts of taking payments from ex-MP Oleg Voloshyn in return for scripted pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament. Voloshyn is facing trial in Ukraine for treason and is under US and EU sanctions. Gill was released on bail.

He was returning from Moscow www.thesun.co.uk/news/3685109...

They’re the same party. Literally. It’s the same Companies House listing So that clears up the “oh it’s a different party” nonsense👍🏼 7/14

And let’s not pretend that the Brexit Party and Reform are different parties!🙄 Nov 2018 Brexit Party Ltd set up by former UKIP economics spokesperson Jan 2019 Brexit party formerly announced Feb 2019 Farage announces his involvement Jan 2021 Brexit Party Ltd is RENAMED to Reform UK Ltd 6/14

She makes very good points. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... “watching Donald Trump bulldoze through a written constitution makes it impossible not to wonder how Britain, with its more higgledy-piggledy ad hoc constitution, would resist an outright populist attack on its democratic institutions”

For the Guardian, @turnbulldugarte.com and I discuss our research that clearly shows one thing: Labour's anti-immigration strategy will only strengthen Reform and weaken its own electoral prospects. It won't win voters back but ultimately normalizes the far right www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Good to see this important research getting a wider audience. Hope Labour advisors listen and learn

NEW: When Labour voters were asked why they believed things were getting worse for the UK, they overwhelmingly cited Brexit as the number one cause, with 69 per cent naming the decision to leave the European Union as the main reason behind the country’s problems. inews.co.uk/news/politic...

Bless those who think the Home Office can successfully carry out a huge IT procurement exercise for digital ID cards for implementation before the next general election.

This Labour government seems to determined to create all the tools necessary for a future government of the far-right to control, surveille, and discipline the entire population.

REMINDER: The fight is between LibDems and illiberal Farage.

Refreshing. And with a lot of potential to cause deep concern to Labour folk.

🤣🤣🤣 How out of touch with young people are Labour aides

Starting with you, Keir.

Our media is entirely unable to deal with a situation where politicians just lie all the time, which is unfortunate, because most of our politicians just lie all the time

They are not bringing in ID cards to control immigration, they're bringing in ID cards because they've been lobbied by Blair and Thiel, and they're saying that it's about immigration because that's what people (apparently) care most about just now.

In China, digital ID is used to restrict movements, restrict work and deploy social score to control who you might want to make friends with. Just like Black Mirror S3E1. Without proper consultation, without a digital bill of rights, we're glad the Lib Dems say NO to Mandatory ID.

The scandal of using asylum seekers as cover to roll out digital IDs This is yet another policy disaster from Keir Starmer and Labour, we can just sit back and watch it unravel itself over the upcoming months

Tying the introduction of digital ID to a promise to address immigration feels….mad. Plenty of countries have mandatory ID and bigger shadow economies than the UK. It politicises and polarises an issue that by its nature needs cross-party buy-in.

ID cards are generally a solution in search of a problem. They double up as a way to make basic infrastructure work – like joining up government data and having shared logins across systems etc – contentious. They can turn into huge outsourced IT projects, that the UK is traditionally awful at. 🧵

I’m ambivalent about this for myself but I’m going to put this on record now: This will lead to some major scandal that results in a full blown statutory inquiry, an apology, a compensation scheme and an ITV drama. Not because this is inherent to digital ID, but because it’s inherent to the UK.

Creating an ID system in the UK right now, amid anti-immigrant hysteria as part of a pledge specifically to target immigrants, is simply not the same as the complex legal and social history of ie German ID cards.

Mandatory ID cards are a terrible, terrible idea iandunt.substack.com/p/id-cards-a...

Has anyone asked the people of Gaza whether they want a war criminal as an overlord?

🚨 NEW: Starmer’s desperate rush for digital IDs is a recipe for repression ID cards won’t reduce migration and will put trans rights at risk. But that’s not the biggest cost of Starmer’s half-baked scheme... https://goodlaw.social/sa9h

The depressing thing about today is that it was sold as Starmer's answer to Reform. This is apparently what he has to offer as a vision of a confident diverse nation: ID cards. Just utterly joyless and emotionless.

My suspicion is this will end up as another failed UK attempt to introduce ID cards because Starmer won't last long enough to implement it and his replacement will be the candidate promising to abandon the scheme, not least given the way it has been sold.

Whether or not digital ID is a good long-term policy, the politics of it are that Labour just set up a battle with its own party and all the others, promising to achieve something this scheme probably can't, at an obvious actual and opportunity cost.

9/ Mandatory ID only works as a tool if officials can demand it in situations where the holder isn’t suspected of a crime. It requires a power to demand “your papers” from any of us, as we go about our lawful business.

UK: pls can we have a crumb of affordable homes and non-cost-of-living-crisis Starmer: so you're saying you want *spins wheel* ID cards

'Passports would be a solution. I'd be open to that.' Bingo. You have just in one sentence explained why ID isnt required, we already have a perfectly good form of ID that A) could be free and B) could also be digital and C) people already know how to get. Common sense prevails!

The problem with common sense is it isnt sexy and doesnt allow politicians to grand stand in front of cameras.

I’m sure we will allow EU citizens to come to Britain using just their IDs, as they did before #Brexit , right? Right?

You think people fall through the cracks and get lost in a Kafkaesque maze of red tape now? If it's all (supposedly) on one system, it'll not only be just as bad, but the false assurance of whatever flashy piece of software they use will make it even harder to identify and fix errors.

Time for me to deploy my expertise from having worked with databases of individuals and their data in the public sector: whatever you might imagine will be happening behind the scenes of a digital ID card, the actual reality of that dataset is going to be an information governance nightmare.

⚠️ The latest poll is sobering. But the vote share for the progressive coalition (Lab, Lib, Green) remains larger than that of the Tories and Reform UK. The government must go further on Europe to unite the left and see off the false promises of Farage. https://bit.ly/3IlbGNc

Is it "move to Dubai"?

Estimates of the size of the "shadow economy" France 7% Germany 7% Italy 8% ..even Estonia 7% UK: 5% Idea that ID cards are some kind of panacea... www.ey.com/content/dam/...

It should be crashingly obvious that digital ID will not stop rogue employers hiring people off the books and paying them cash in hand. Properly hired workers are already required to have a National Insurance number.