Identity Politics

The matter of photographic identification for voting is rearing its ugly head again. How odd that a Government that has been elected with an enormous majority now claims that the system is so shot through with fraud that this level of change is necessary. Northern Ireland is hardly a happy precedent. And the Government seems to be forgetting who the Conservative Party's decisive voters now are. 

Here along the Red Wall, the Starmerite public sector middle classes have photo ID coming out of their ears. It is the people who very narrowly turned these seats blue last time who often do not drive, and who routinely do not travel abroad. Nor could they spare the fee for some kind of voting card. Yet the Government proposes to disenfranchise them. Thereby devastating its own majority. 

A free card? Believe that when you see it. Countries that have identity cards anyway are one thing, but the only reason why anyone ever wants photo ID for voting anywhere else, such as here or in America, is in order to stop the poor from voting. The thing is that the poor are now the Conservatives' base, or at least they are now the key to the Conservatives' majority. Yet on this as on several other issues, that party does not quite seem to have come to terms with that fact. For its own sake, and in order to prevent a nightmare Starmer Government, they had better. And soon. 

No, "they" do not "need photo ID for benefits". Most poor people are in work, or at least they were until this year. But for benefits, you only need an address. You do not even have to prove a National Insurance number, although presumably they can and do check. I do not know that they do, though. I am just assuming that. Large numbers of people do not have passports, do not have driving licences, do not have bank accounts (for which you do not need photo ID, either), and so on. Who do you think that they are? Keir Starmer? 

This legislation was drafted in order to suppress the votes of people who used to vote Labour. But those people now vote Conservative, and that is why the Conservatives have an overall majority of 80. In these highly marginal seats, it would be the people who still did vote Labour who would keep their votes if this legislation ever reached the Statute Book. Thereby handing these seats back to Labour, and quite probably, even if only at the head of an anyone-but-the-Tories Coalition, making Starmter Prime Minister. His strongest supporters have all the photo ID in the world. And they are going to be the Returning Officers and the polling clerks. 

Of course the Labour Party sometimes requires photo ID at selection meetings. That is in order to stop the lower orders from voting. Have you ever met the people who run Constituency Labour Parties? Have you ever seen the people who never really stopped running the party nationally, and who are now back leading it officially? Well, there you are, then. That their putting of a CLP into special measures means restricting the vote to people with both a passport and a driving licence speaks a whole library of volumes.

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