The "public awareness campaign" is to cost £5.6 million, but watch out for the chaos around voter ID. That is something to look forward to. We are now going to have American-style denial of the result at every election for evermore, or at least while this madness lasted.
But requiring photographic identification to vote is not about electoral fraud. It is only partially about even voter suppression. This is about identity cards, which have been the Home Office's solution in search of a problem for as long as I can remember.
And identity cards, which are once again Labour Party policy as well, obtained from whom? The Passport Office and the DVLA, documentation from one or other of which is now required in order to exercise the franchise, are about to be privatised. Who is going to buy them? Infosys? The foreign states that have bought the utilities and the rail companies? Who, exactly?
We are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Could the chaos at the local elections spell the end of identity cards?
ReplyDeleteWe live in hope. But they are one of those bad ideas which never die.
Delete