Georgia L Gilholy: Mandatory ID cards would not help combat illegal migration, but would undermine our way of life

Georgia L Gilholy is a journalist.

Downing Street says every Brit could soon be issued with a mandatory ID card. An official spokesperson for the Prime Minister told press on Tuesday that asylum hotels, the black economy, and benefit fraud mean the “debate has moved on” since similar plans were scrapped under Tony Blair.

But illegal immigration and a spiralling black market are problems that have been largely inflicted upon our population by the State itself. Benefit fraud is a crime enabled by the same faceless, inert bureaucracy that an ID card culture would expand. To force this alien custom on our country under the guise of “safety” would be akin to smashing up one’s entire home to swat away a fruitfly. (Nor has it been explained how much money this programme would cost.)

The real debate that has “moved on” is the one surrounding immigration: legal and illegal, which No 10 refuses to bring itself up to speed with. For various cultural and economic reasons, voters want much less immigration, and the government has routinely harangued their complaints as racism and bigotry.

But now, this same Blob wishes to wield our own uncertainty and anger as a weapon against us, and our rights to liberty and privacy.

Last month Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite think tank, Labour Together, urged him to make digital identity a “top prime ministerial priority”. The group, previously headed by No 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, boasted that such a change would kickstart a “fundamental transformation in the way British citizens interact with the government”.

Indeed, this is about disrupting these isles’ historic freedoms and replacing them with something sinister. The proposed “BritCard” would have little to do with preserving the sovereignty of the national unit it has tweely wedged into its name, but about chipping away at it yet further. Across the political spectrum, we must organise robust opposition to this threat.

​But will such a coalition materialise on the Right? Reform MP Sarah Pochin told TalkTV she “didn’t have a problem with an ID card,” and that she “doesn’t see what the issue is.” She also suggested that, despite Reform leader Nigel Farage’s opposition to such measures, she did not think their party had a “clear policy” on the matter.

This is worrying. But any Tories eager to hound their rivals about this lack of direction must take a look at their own record: in 2023, compulsory voter ID was introduced to solve the non-existent issue of polling station voter fraud, essentially pushing the need for ID cards by stealth nationwide. At the time, none of Westminster’s allegedly libertarian think tanks, always so eager to hold seminars on pornography, prostitution, and pot legalisation, took notice; Big Brother Watch was a laudable exception.

The English common law tradition holds that one is free until the law forbids one. Compulsory ID mirrors the incompatible civil law presumption that one is free only if the law explicitly says so. Mandating individuals to carry evidence of their identity, whether to vote or to simply leave their home, or risk prosecution and even jail, would likely eradicate this already beleaguered assumption for all future generations.

And who would be upholding these new strictures? The same police that are now trained to behave like interfering social workers rather than upholders of the King’s Peace. Earlier this week, they arrested an Irish comedian for tweets, and have previously sought guidance from “community advisers” who expressed support for Hamas.

Simultaneously, serious crimes soar, with many murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders receiving light sentences, or even avoiding jail completely.

Those keen to defend ID cards often complain that Britain is one of the only European countries with no national ID card system. They also claim that this contributes to the black market in which many illegal immigrants are employed. Yet Greece, Romania, and Spain all have such systems, and their black economies amount to up to a quarter of their entire GDPs – far higher than the UK.

While official figures now put Italy at a similar level to Britain, it had the exact same strict ID system in 2018, when its black market was thought to total 25 per cent of its income. Authoritarian Russia has rigid ID card laws, but its shadow economy amounts to over 30 per cent of economic output.​

But the Blob’s assumption, by default, is that if Britain is an outlier in some regard, it must be Britain that is at fault. History proves this oikophobic assumption to be entirely irrational. Weak law enforcement, heavy bureaucracy, widespread corruption, and cultural norms play much more of a role in whether such crimes flourish, not what papers one must carry around.

Indeed, it is Britain’s historic sense of high trust and fair play that has permitted our freer culture. This is to be celebrated and jealousy preserved, not destroyed.​​

The Government already knows where the vast majority of asylum seekers are, because their bed and board are covered by taxpayers. Reversing this vast pull factor would likely require an exit from the ECHR, which Labour refuses to do. ID cards for Brits will do little to quash a black market with no interest in the law.

Nor will they stop the vast legal and illegal immigration which the State permits. As Giles Dilnot, editor of this website and erstwhile advisor to former home secretary James Cleverly, told Times Radio earlier this week, the Tories considered using ID cards as a deterrent. The idea was that if someone could get here illegally, and had no intention of leaving, such cards could make it harder for them to be legally employed or housed long-term.

There has never been any suggesting that such cards would stop people arriving here on small boats in the first place, as the Government is now bizarrely implying.

Anyone desperate to surrender ancient freedoms to a government that shows no interest in taking them, or the truth, seriously, only has themself to blame.