In Resolute Opposition To Digital ID: I Wrote To My Local MP

Last year (2025), the British government under Kier Starmer proposed the introduction of Digital ID. Its implementation was assured to be completed by the end of the government’s term in 2029, and – particularly agregiously – it would be compulsory, at least for work.

I regarded this as a travesty, and very soon after started drafting a letter that I had it in my mind to send to my MP but I held off for a couple of weeks before one day deciding just to send it. This post documents that correspondence, and some closing thoughts left at the end now that I have recevied a reply, and the matter seems mostly resolved. But as I wonder in my closing thoughts – have we really seen the back of Digital ID?

Aside from the name redactions, the letters have not been edited at all. They are reproduced exactly as they were sent and recieved.

My Letter in Full:

Dear [My MP],

I am a Resident in your Constituency, and I wanted to write to you to petition your support in opposing Labour measures to introduce Digital ID. I know that you yourself are a Labour MP and may feel some pressure to tow the party line, but to do so, I dare to say, likely puts you at odds with the will of the people you serve. I would venture to say loyalty to one is far more noble than the other; parties come and go, like the wind, and are not real but for the paper they’re written on, but this constituency is a locality of real people who are materially affected by government policy, and if a democracy is to have any integrity surely it ought to serve them earnestly?

I really believe opposition to Digital ID to be a broadly non-partisan issue. I know Kier Starmer insisted it would be implemented by the end of this government, but I see nothing in this but the threat of a forthcoming soft tyranny that ultimately undermines the Natural Liberties of every Citizen of the Kingdom.

I have not heard any stated ambition for such a system that could not be better achieved some other way, and the shortfalls are legion. Justification for such an imposition is left severely wanting; it is a ripe target for digital crime, and the government would be arrogant and demonstrably wrong to suggest that it is capable of keeping such a goldmine of data safe from prying eyes. I would raise just a few of many high profile hackings, such as the Tea app that collected much sensitive personal data (of people who did not consent to it, too, bearing striking comparison with Digital ID in that respect); that Rockstar’s largest Intellectual Property ever (Grand Theft Auto 6) was also leaked by a hacker ahead of time, and that the NHS has been hacked before, as has Jaguar Land Rover, and more besides. The point I am making here is that no amount of money or effort can protect something so sensitive and valuable from digital assault, in the same way a knight’s armour is incapable of protecting him from a well-landed sword blow. Any government introducing Digital ID betrays the Privacy and Trust of its Citizens, and leaves them vulnerable to identity theft, scams, stalking, and other Malicious consequences. I would dare to say that any government that held its people’s safety in such low regard was unfit and unworthy to govern.

The Prime Minister suggested (in what I really think was an effort, badly judged, to placate Reform-like voters) that it would help to deter illegal migration, but this is a patently foolish claim. We already have National Insurance numbers, Passports, Driving Licences, and other forms of ID. Illegal workers are working off the books by their very nature and the requirement to show Digital ID will be met with the same nod-and-a-wink circumventing as current measures are. For an employer so-inclined, paying cash-in-hand to an illegal worker will be no difficulty whatsoever. Meanwhile, the Good and rightly Free Citizens of the Kingdom are inconvenienced in a manner that serves them no benefit whatsoever, and only exposes them to harm.

It was said by Lord Acton in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely,” and in this timelessly true indictment of political authority a scary foreshadowing emerges about digital ID. That is, I think you will already know, the ripe potential for government overreach into Citizen’s lives. The most immediate threat to any man’s Natural Liberties is always his own government. It cannot be denied that this paves the way for all manner of ills: social exclusion of certain groups; the tracking and policing of thoughts, movement, purchases, and more, all tied to the individual’s identity; the building of profiles; the cruel and unusual enforcement of bad laws, and yet more besides.

There may be some appeal in this to the party in power: indeed, it is a fine tool for repressing dissenters. We have all heard countless cases of unsavoury internet comments landing people in trouble with the law. And perhaps this is all well and good, when the people being hounded are one’s own political rivals. But winds change, sir, and seldom faster than in politics. One day, the hunter will be the hunted, and will wish he’d shown his prey a little more Mercy when he could, when they take their turn to show none to him. I would not want my opponents to be silenced, because by desiring it, I by consequence will be desiring my own silence when the time comes for their ascendence.

We are incumbered with a moral Duty as much as by the burden of Common Sense, to see that Liberty prevails over this Great Kingdom. No good can come of Digital ID. It is the pathway to totalitarianism, and hands the keys to our chains to those who harbour a tyrant’s proclivity. No measure could be worth the loss of Autonomy or Dignity thereby suffered by the Good people of this Land.

I urge you, sir, to do your Duty by them; to speak where they cannot, and work with us to strike down Digital ID in whatever form it may take. It is an insult to the British character to be forced to show his papers so, as if he is an alien in his own home.

Yours sincerely,
[Ephemeral Dawn]

My MPs Full Response:

Dear [Ephemeral Dawn],

Thank you for raising your concerns about digital ID.

I have been scrutinising the plans in detail and the Government has now announced that the IDs will no longer be compulsory to prove right-to-work from 2029, which was the only mandatory component of the proposal.

Therefore, digital IDs, which are planned to be introduced in 2029, will now be completely optional. The Government has listened to the concerns of the public regarding the compulsory element of digital ID.

The Prime Minister has said that he is still ‘determined to make it harder for people to work illegally’ and ‘there will be checks, they will be digital, and they will be mandatory’.

A full consultation on digital ID will be launched shortly, and full policy details will follow.

I will be back in touch with further updates as the legislation progresses.

Kind regards,
[My MP]

Closing Thoughts:

Thoughts on the Change in Policy & Optional Digital ID:

I remain resolutely opposed to digital ID. I will certainly never choose to use it. I did start drafting a series of blog posts that – though functionally useless now – I may still post for purposes of debate, and even just ‘for the record’, as it is something I feel strongly about. If I do, they’ll be linked from here.

The scrapping of the mandatory requirement was the only right and sane decision and I am glad the government took it.

I think if they hadn’t, the eventual hacking of this system would be a certainty, and the government would be swamped with lawsuits over the damage. It’s one thing to have your email address and a password leaked – even your bank details – if a website you used gets hacked, but these details can be changed. You can reset passwords, banks can send you new cards. Digital ID is quite another – to have your whole identity stolen is an incredibly hard thing to come back from.

I still don’t think Digital ID should exist at all, in any form. But as long as I am never compelled to use it, I can perhaps accept the existence of it as something optional. I am deeply sceptical that uptake will be high, and the government may eventually just shut it down due to lack of use.

The reverse side of this, though, and this is a concern that remains for me (and why I don’t believe it should exist in any form at all) is that it starts to become a requirement insisted on by private entities. It doesn’t need to be legally mandated, to become mandatory. If employers choose to force you to use it just for a chance at getting a job, just like they do with their god-forsaken websites where you have to make accounts that they likely never delete just to apply for a minimum-wage job, then it is in all but name still a mandatory ID.

Bargaining power is unequal – deeply so – between the jobseeker and the employer. It won’t be a practical choice, then, to not use Digital ID. Other businesses could do the same. Maybe it is required by banks as a verification, so you can no longer use online banking or even access your own account without verification. Maybe it becomes a requirement to get a mortgage. Maybe the NHS use it for expedience, and you now need it for access to healthcare. There are a lot of ways this insidious system could become functionally mandatory even despite the absence of law decreeing it so. This is something of a ‘watch this space’. We have taken a rotten apple out of the barrel – and taken too long about it – but did we do it in time to stop the others turning bad too?

I know for sure that I and many others would boycott companies who forced this on us – non-essentials like eBay, Amazon, Argos, etc. Their arrogance would be their undoing. But if services we need started doing it, we would, ultimately, be powerless to prevent it so long as the government was not on our side. And I hasten to add that I sincerely do not believe that this government is.

The Prime Minister’s own words are not a great encouragement to this end. He assures us that there will still be checks, they will be digital, and they will be mandatory. If this is true, I fancy the ghost of this sick scheme is likely to haunt us again.

We Already Have IDs – Are You Just A Luddite?

I am not. The counter-argument, frequently aired in opposition to my opposition, that we already have ID in the way of driving licences, passports, and so on, is a poor one because it talks past my objections – it misses a glaring distinction.

Digital ID is a plan to centralise certain sensitive data about you and tie it all to one identity. This is not what your driving licence, or passport, etc., do. When you get three points on your licence for speeding, nothing about that is accessable to someone validaing your passport at the border, or to your employer when getting a job. Likewise, your passport being stamped, verifying your entry into Spain for a summer holiday with the family, is not connected to your driving licence, and so on.

The crucial point here is that these forms of ID don’t collect personal data about you, and they don’t share that information with each other. You are not being profiled. And all of your data is not in one place. If someone steals your passport, you can still drive, and if someone steals your driving licence you can still take a holiday abroad, because they are not the same identification. If someone stole your Digital ID, and this was required to travel, to work, to prove your age at the pub, etc., you would be locked out of society until it was recovered or replaced.

I’m no Luddite. I do not resist technology. I resist control and a plainly obvious goosestep to disaster. It is a certainty that our data would eventually be misused; either by our government, or by a bad actor who is able to get access to it. It is not idle conspiracy. Sensitive data is getting lost and leaked all the time, and all that I will say on that in this specific post is that very often, it is lost by companies whose business depends on keeping it safe and private.

No such pressure exists for the government: they remain the government whether your data is safe or not (at least, until election day). If Rockstar loses Grand Theft Auto 6, what does it sell? If Jaguar Land Rover is crippled, how does it make cars? The business of government can continue despite this disaster, where the business of private enterprise cannot. And private enterprise is incapable of keeping even its own data safe – there is no compelling reason at all to assume a government would do a better job of keeping your data safe, and especially not this government, who seem to have a chronic inability to foresee even the most obvious consequences to just about everything they do.

Anyway, this post is getting rather long so I will close it here. I may still release those other drafts on the subject of Digital ID. It treads some of the same ground as this letter but goes into some different depth and discussion too. If I do post it, I’ll add a link here.

Until then, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you here again.

Fair winds and a following sea,
Ephemeral Dawn.

Addendum: I Replied To My MP

Dear [My MP],

Thank you for your reply.

I am pleased to hear the government has taken the right decision to relent on the mandatory nature of Digital ID. Cynical though I think the motivations probably were, it is still a happier place than we found ourselves in before when the Blight of this system over our lives seemed ever so likely.

However, I retain some of my concerns. Privacy is a real issue still. Maybe the case for it is not as strong now that participation is optional but this isn’t convincing to me: participation in scams is usually optional too, but to suggest people consented to the risk would be unfair and improper when they are usually duped owing to their ignorance over the dangers they unwittingly walked into. Digital ID poses the same risk to people’s data: the government will fail to discharge its duty to protect that information sooner or later and the fact that participation in that was optional doesn’t negate the severity of it. The government is dutybound to serve the People of the Country, not take preparatory steps towards their inevitable harm.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has a remarkable ability to fail to reassure, even when he would purport to do so. His words at PMQs do not suggest that mandatory Digital ID is really going away. “There will be checks, they will be digital, and they will be mandatory.” What form this is supposed to take is unclear but every one of those requirements manifested in Digital ID.

The most desirable solution to the problem of Digital ID is to completely strike it down. One of the largest petitions this country has ever seen was in opposition to it, Labour did not include it in their manifesto, nobody in the electorate had a chance to vote on it and the overwhelming majority of those who have since spoken on the matter don’t want it. To even still be considering it only vindicates Labour’s legion critics that this is a party that is desperately out of touch with what the British People actually want from a government.

There remains the worry too that this will become mandatory in all but name, and that this whole affair is a smokescreen. If the system is still designed and built, and companies find it an expedient way to ease the recruitment process, they may require it of job applicants. You may say this is consistent with ID being optional but there comes a point at which it truly isn’t. Maybe banks follow suit and it is required to open accounts, or get mortgages, etc. Eventually nobody will have a practical choice in the matter, and the fact it was not law means less than nothing: Digital ID will be mandatory for the many anyway, and that catastrophic data breach and all the harm that will manifest because of it sits – just as it did before – right around the corner.

I am not encouraged by the idea that one Tyrant is to be swapped for another: the system is only going to be a source of pain for the Good People of this Country and should be struck down in its entirety.

Kind regards,
[Ephemeral Dawn]