Starmer’s desperate rush for digital IDs is a recipe for repression

With his government in turmoil and Nigel Farage breathing down his neck, Keir Starmer has reached for the panic button, announcing a digital ID card that would be compulsory to prove your right to work.

“Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK,” the prime minister said. “It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”

The policy was nowhere in Labour’s manifesto, but Starmer has bowed to the pressure from centrist think-tanks such as Labour Together and the Tony Blair Institute and the constant drumbeat on migration from Reform UK.

When Tony Blair tried to launch ID cards in the early 2000s, it cost £4.6bn at 2010 prices, and never even got off the ground. With Labour still claiming the government can’t afford to lift the two-child benefit cap, it’s difficult to see how the cost matches up to the impact.

Let’s be clear: digital ID will not stop irregular migration to the UK. The cards that are widely used in the EU haven’t stopped irregular work and migration. In fact, the informal economy in the UK is smaller than in France or Italy, which both use ID cards, and is overall lower than the European average.

It’s already very hard for legal migrants to prove their right to work and right to rent, and employers have a responsibility to check right-to-work documents or face a £45,000 fine. And the Home Office’s eVisa scheme for migrants is prone to catastrophic error, leaving users unable to travel, work, or rent.

Now Starmer wants to roll that out to everyone in the country.

This isn’t just a desperate attempt to change the narrative ahead of a tricky party conference. It’s also an opportunity for transphobic groups to push their agenda. Starmer’s new director of communications, Tim Allan, hopped straight from the board of Sex Matters, a transphobic campaign group that has form on data and identification.

In May, Sex Matters tried to push through an amendment on the Data Bill that would have given legal force to recording “biological sex” rather than gender identity across public systems – erasing trans identities and potentially invalidating Gender Recognition Certificates. Allen’s appointment puts him in prime position to shape the kind of data that digital IDs will store.

But the problems with Starmer’s digital ID scheme don’t stop there. We’re already living through an unprecedented crackdown on hard-won freedoms. Labour has branded Palestine Action a terrorist group, locked up climate protesters for taking part in a Zoom call and threatened privacy online. Now Starmer wants to force people to put all their details on their phones.

Downing Street claims there will be “no requirement for individuals to carry their ID or be asked to produce it”, but with the latest polls suggesting a Reform government would be a “near-certainty” it’s hard to avoid the question of what Farage would do with this handy tool for authoritarian control. Starmer’s half-baked pre-conference distraction may prove to be his most costly blunder yet.