The debate over national identity (ID) cards is the hardy perennial of British politics. Former British prime minister John Major floated voluntary ID cards in the mid-1990s only for the idea to fizzle out. Former British prime minister Tony Blair introduced comprehensive legislation in 2006 — and a pilot scheme to boot — but the 2010 coalition government withdrew the legislation. Now the push is beginning again, with Labour Together, a think tank close to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, adding its voice to seasoned politicians such as Blair and former Conservative Party leader William Hague. Let us hope this time the perennial bears fruit.
I sympathize with the libertarian arguments against ID cards, which change the relationship between the state and the citizen. They are at odds with the common law tradition that relies heavily on the notion of ancient liberties (the holdouts against the global trend toward ID cards have all been common law countries). “Papers please” has an irreducibly Prussian ring to it.
Yet Britain has changed so fundamentally over the past four decades that we have no choice but to rethink our libertarian instincts. The private sector’s voracious demand for personal information has rendered the privacy argument hollow: How can we object to giving information to the state (by which we mean the people in their collective capacity) when we routinely give it to profit-maximizing companies? The vast flow of people in and out of the UK has also enormously strengthened the practical case for ID cards. They might have seemed alien in a world in which people seldom traveled across county lines let alone across the world, but they are surely routine in a world where 16 percent of the UK population were born abroad — and where people-smuggling is a large global business.
The strongest reason for introducing ID cards is the mounting immigration crisis. Put bluntly: If we fail to get illegal migration under control, the likelihood that Nigel Farage’s Reform party would win the next election either as a single governing party or as part of a coalition is high. Without ID cards, we have just one line of defense against undocumented immigrants — the border. With ID cards, we have as many lines as we have police to check people’s identity.
Britain’s lack of such cards acts as a “pull” factor for undocumented immigrants because it makes it easier to access not just jobs, but also public services, particularly the National Health Service. Not the only “pull” factor, to be sure — the English language and the flexible labor market are also important — but certainly an important one given that at least 170 nations, including Britain’s closest neighbors, have ID cards. Britain’s lack also makes it more difficult for the police to find illegal migrants.
Critics of this argument make two practical points. The first is that non-nationals are already obliged to carry proof of identity, whether they are here legally or are refugees waiting for their cases to be heard. The second is that people who are here illegally would not allow a little thing like ID cards deter them, but ID cards only work properly if they are universal: The fact that legal immigrants carry cards does nothing to prevent undocumented immigrants from hiding among the majority of Britons who do not have any official proof of their identities.
State IDs would be harder to forge or pass off as your own than the unofficial papers that illegal migrants currently use because they incorporate sophisticated biometric technology. David Blunkett, who was British home secretary when a pilot ID scheme was introduced in 2002, claims that, when the ID cards were released, the number of people smuggled into the UK fell by two-thirds.
The argument in favor of identifying undocumented immigrants is part of a bigger argument around knowing who is in the UK. In his seminal book Seeing Like a State, the political scientist James Scott argued that the defining feature of the modern state is that it knows who lives within its borders — it can “see” its citizens to provide them with benefits and extract obligations. Yet the British state is increasingly blind: We have a less clear sense of who lives within our shores than the Victorians did. Some estimates suggest there might be 1 million more people residing in the UK than the census suggests.
Then there is the “Prussian” question of war: Britain’s two experiments with ID cards took place in wartime. In both 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1952, ID cards were part of comprehensive schemes of military recruitment, rationing and anti-espionage. The war argument has growing force. The world is in a more dangerous state than at any point since the 1930s. Russia is engaged in an information war with the UK and could easily open other fronts at the drop of a hat. Sweden has already introduced conscription and several other European nations are drawing up contingency plans to do the same. ID cards need to be part of a comprehensive program of war preparation that should also include education in misinformation and, in time, conscription.
I regret the fact that the case for introducing ID cards is so strong. It would cost a lot of money at a time when public finances are strained, but the case is strong nevertheless. John Maynard Keynes said that when the facts change, I change my mind — and when it rains, I put up my umbrella. The weather is too stormy for Britain to justify its no-umbrella policy any longer.
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at The Economist, he is author of The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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