On The Cards

"BritCard"? How the years roll back, and not in a good way. Tony Blair's computerisation of the NHS was the biggest civilian IT project ever. 23 years later, there is still no sign of it. Set that alongside the cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover. Then ponder the digital ID that was proposed in June by Morgan McSweeney's Labour Together, hence the hideously Noughties name. Announcing it now to deflect attention from the undeclared £700,000 displays undeniable self-belief.

Identity cards have always been a New Labour obsession to rank with NHS privatisation, although that was never to be attempted except in England, with the NHS recognised as the strongest argument for the Union in the other three parts of the United Kingdom. This Government is so bad at politics that it intends to impose the BritCard from West Glamorgan, to West Lothian, to West Belfast. There may be riots in Scotland. There may be worse than that across the Irish Sea.

Although the Coalition discontinued Blair's attempt at this, it had in fact become government policy under John Major and Michael Howard. William Hague speaks for the grandees when he enthusiastically commends it today. Accordingly, Kemi Badenoch sits on the fence, while Chris Philp is positively enthusiastic, as have been several people who were now leading members of Reform UK. Ann Widdecombe was calling for this only three months ago, on exactly the grounds that Keir Starmer now purported to advocate it.

Everyone on that march on 13 September put themselves on Palantir's facial recognition system. The shock troops of the resistance need to come from elsewhere. My old friend Dr Dave Smith is now applying for a judicial review of the failure to call him to give oral evidence to the spycops inquiry. If that scandal received anything like the coverage that it deserved, then digital ID would have public approval below 10 per cent. Dave's Blacklist Support Group is old school trade unionism, crossing over as that does with the justice campaigns around Shrewsbury, Clay Cross, the Battle of the Beanfield, Hillsborough, Orgreave, Grenfell Tower, the Windrush scandal, the Post Office scandal, the contaminated blood scandal, the WASPI women, the wrongfully imprisoned, the nuclear test veterans, and very many more.

A start has been made by Dave's union and mine, Unite, which has declined to nominate either candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. One of them is still a member of this Cabinet, the other said that the Winter Fuel Payment had to be withdrawn to prevent a run on the pound. They are both in favour of the digital ID that would be delivered by the Tony Blair Institute while Blair himself was spending at least five years heading "the Gaza International Transitional Authority". I first told you on 13 November 2023 that Blair was being lined up to be Viceroy of Gaza, now on behalf of a State that would by then have recognised the Falkland Islands as part of Argentina.

No change there, of course, since Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War, with Menachem Begin seeing that as revenge. Israel is much closer to Javier Milei than even to Starmer, while Liz Truss has said that she would have endorsed Milei as a candidate for Leader of the Conservative Party. His Argentina is the latest Promised Land of the British Right, which always needs a Fatherland somewhere away from the NHS. The real sport will be over Israel's attitude to the sovereignty of Gibraltar, since Spain has also recognised Palestine. Will Gibraltarians be issued with Blair's BritCards while he ran Gaza on behalf of a foreign power that thought that they should not be British? Very possibly. Will Falkland Islanders be in that position? Without doubt. Unless we had stopped this whole scheme in its tracks.