UK Digital ID

The proposed digital ID in the UK seems a strange beast. We’re told it will be necessary to work in the UK from 2028 / 2029, but we already have to prove our right to work - we just use different things. So why would we build an expensive, complex, and highly vulnerable system to do the same job?

If I was a cynic, which naturally I am not, I would think it was almost as if the “right to work” argument was simply a Trojan horse to get mandatory digital ID over the line. You may recall that governments keep coming back to the idea of mandatory IDs, regardless of how unpopular they are, and whether there is any justifiable need for them.

I personally remember the push by the Blair government, which was ultimately knocked back. It was tried, sort of, during COVID as well. I also remember my father telling me how happy my grandfather was to finally be able to burn his ID papers in the 1950s following their use in the Second World War.

Mandatory IDs, digital or otherwise, require the government to be the holder of data about everyone, the arbiter of who gets to see it, and the judge as who gets to be allowed to function in society. They are an unnecessary and blatant power grab, and should be opposed.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit that defends civil liberties in the digital world, has a good article on this. I recommend you all give it a read.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/uk-has-it-wrong-digital-id-heres-why