And, of course, there's an inappropriate comparison to a TV show where the people subject to the "snog, marry, avoid" question were celebrities who had chosen to be on the show. Which is a very different scenario from a juvenile game played about someone without their knowledge or permission.
And, of course, there's an inappropriate comparison to a TV show where the people subject to the "snog, marry, avoid" question were celebrities who had chosen to be on the show. Which is a very different scenario from a juvenile game played about someone without their knowledge or permission.
And I can't imagine the reaction would have been so bland or equivocal if they'd been talking about the Shadow Home Secretary in 2022 rather than the occupant of the same post in 2017. Whether that's racism, factionalism, or both I couldn't say.
And, of course, there's an inappropriate comparison to a TV show where the people subject to the "snog, marry, avoid" question were celebrities who had chosen to be on the show. Which is a very different scenario from a juvenile game played about someone without their knowledge or permission.
And even there, there's been a lot of discussion recently about putting celebrities (who will be contractually obliged to do interviews as part of promo tours) through inappropriate questions or games, where interviewers are more interested in a clip going viral than being appropriate or asking interesting questions. Someone being a celebrity and having nominally chosen to be there doesn't excuse sexual harassment or inappropriate questions.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
Well, their follow up conversation went into somewhat graphic detail:
Spoilered text is link to an ITV article contain an extract of the transcript.
And he was using the Labour Party's own communications infrastructure to relate the story? That's just beyond bad judgement.
One of the links I posted had Amanda Holden discussing what noises she imagined David Walliams would make during sex. Crude graphic detail is the name of the game.
I'm not sure why you are insisting that the messages were about a game of 'Snog, Marry, Avoid', you can see from the link that they aren't.
As I said on the Trump thread, the deal is not that great. Starmer wants us to be a world centre of AI. The deal allows big US tech companies to open AI centres here. It will be good for local jobs, but not sure how much profit will be put into the local community. Will most of the profits go back to the US and to shareholders?
It's a clutching at straws thing to a large extent but at least there are straws to clutch at.
It's unpalatable but I don't think Starmer and Co had any option but to roll out the red carpet and play the royalty card.
I'd rather see investment in green technology rather than AI provided we don't get dirty great big pylons subverting the effect by marching the renewable energy all over the countryside.
It's a clutching at straws thing to a large extent but at least there are straws to clutch at.
It's unpalatable but I don't think Starmer and Co had any option but to roll out the red carpet and play the royalty card.
I'd rather see investment in green technology rather than AI provided we don't get dirty great big pylons subverting the effect by marching the renewable energy all over the countryside.
But how would pylons make energy less green? Environmental protection isn't about preserving the looks of the countryside - indeed, a lot of problems are caused by people's ideas of what the countryside "should" look like being based on intensive sheep grazing rather than unimproved wetlands. Pylons and solar farms etc aren't harmful to the environment.
It's a clutching at straws thing to a large extent but at least there are straws to clutch at.
It's unpalatable but I don't think Starmer and Co had any option but to roll out the red carpet and play the royalty card.
I'd rather see investment in green technology rather than AI provided we don't get dirty great big pylons subverting the effect by marching the renewable energy all over the countryside.
You have a choice - pylons or very expensive underground cables. There really isn't an option C.
It's not just about the generation - it's also about getting enough electricity to where it's needed to replace fossil fuels.
Given the increasing of intensity of storms, I think expensive underground cables maybe the way to go.
I think that depends on how expensive. I seem to recall the figure being in the region of 10-20 times as much. I struggle to envisage storms in the normal lifetime of the cables that would require every pylon and cable to be replaced even once, never mind 10 times or more.
I think that is optimistic - the issue not that every pylon falls over - it is that one coming down knocks out a whole area, and what you want most is a reliable uninterrupted supply. This is more true, the more dependent we become on digital infrastructure - whether that’s electronic medical notes, or aircraft control towers or whatever. It’s not that you can’t repair something within a day or so, it’s the amount of damage the fact of the direct and economic damage the interruption does.
The cost of disruption is worth taking account of, you're right. I'd be open to being convinced of costs vs savings. It might be that there is modelling of wind speeds that could evaluate on a location by location basis. I suspect, however, that it wouldn't be a 1:1 match for the places people want buried cables for aesthetic reasons.
In the Highlands of Scotland, in many of the areas generating hydro-electricity, putting cables underground would involve using explosives to blast out a route through granite. There just isn't the depth of soil to bury them in any other way.
That certainly used to be the case - perhaps there's new technology for boring through rock and feeding a cable through? But at any rate "burying" by digging isn't an option.
Part of the benefit of a properly constructed grid is that there are only a few areas served by a single link, and most parts of the grid are redundant in some way. At the same time there are pylons in countries with significantly more extreme weather than the UK.
Burying transmission lines is significantly more expensive over the lifetime of grid than using cables (often by an order of magnitude), repair - while rarer - is much more expensive, and heat dissipation is a real issue -- most installations rely on being in soil that is moist at least some of the time, as water conducts the heat away - as the lifetime/utility of the cable drops correspondingly as it heats up.
The large steel pylons used for the main grid connections are not going to be blown over by strong winds. Though, strong winds can bring down cables between them if these blow debris against the lines, these risks are almost entirely removed by not routing these grid connections through heavily forested areas (and, of course, the height of the cables reduces the problems). Most issues with grid damage relate to the lower voltage connections between the high voltage interconnectors and local grids, running on smaller and lower pylons where damage by trees etc is more likely, and within more local networks where cables are often still supported by wooden poles.
Just to add; the IET was asked to look at this in the specific context of the UK and have produced very comprehensive report on the topic, as well as multiple summaries at varying levels of detail:
Well, the Tony Blair Institute has just released (another) report on the benefits of 'digital ID'.
Post-Windrush a lot of people will have concerns about something that's purely (or even largely) digital, and if they are really planning on calling it 'Brit Card' I see a Northern Ireland shaped hole in that.
In theory I'm not opposed to ID cards, especially if they're free - they work well in EU countries as far as I know. Of course, it would be nice if they came with freedom of movement which is most of the reason why they're so useful in the EU...
If they are going to do it, they should just issue everyone a *free* passport - and stamp the passport of other nationalities with “indefinite leave to remain” or the equivalen as may be appropriate.
There may be good things about ID cards, but as a means for enforcing immigration status (which is the trailer) there's a whole set of disasters waiting to happen.
The objection has sharpened, though, if you have little or no faith in the state to act in good faith. My faith in this, given Starmer's chillingly authoritarian instincts, diminishes by the hour. In this respect, the fact that the different arms of the state hold independent, partial and contradictory versions of our personal data is a defence against its ability to act against us if it so desired. The sort of electronic record Starmer seems to be envisaging would involve centralising and correcting those records, giving the far greater chance of a single coordinated record per citizen, and thus a far better basis for potentially repressive action.
The objection has sharpened, though, if you have little or no faith in the state to act in good faith. My faith in this, given Starmer's chillingly authoritarian instincts, diminishes by the hour. In this respect, the fact that the different arms of the state hold independent, partial and contradictory versions of our personal data is a defence against its ability to act against us if it so desired. The sort of electronic record Starmer seems to be envisaging would involve centralising and correcting those records, giving the far greater chance of a single coordinated record per citizen, and thus a far better basis for potentially repressive action.
Oh hell, you've just made me realise what should have been obvious: these will include ("biological") sex and the toilet police will be able to demand them at will. A veritable piss-port.
If they are going to do it, they should just issue everyone a *free* passport - and stamp the passport of other nationalities with “indefinite leave to remain” or the equivalen as may be appropriate.
Why have a parallel system ?
Passports are wildly impractical - they're made of paper, and easy to damage, especially if they get a bit wet. If you damage it, it becomes useless, but you generally don't find this out until you show up at the airport, because small, hard-to-notice bits of damage count as "damage".
It would, presumably, be possible to generate a passport from the ID card record, without requiring additional paperwork.
If you get stopped by the police for a driving offence, for example, and you don’t have your driving licence with you - you have a week to present it to a designated police station. Having ID doesn’t necessarily have to mean a duty to produce it on demand.
Also, you could do what supermarkets do with their loyalty cards, you have the main and then a key ring with a barcode that links to the details.
So you could have passports issued with a scannable thing you carry around most of the time - that links to the digital file of your passport held by the government when scanned.
Since 2021, Ellison’s personal foundation – the Larry Ellison Foundation – has donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute, making it a think tank like no other in the UK. Ellison donations have helped it grow to more than 900 staff, working in at least 45 countries. It enjoys US levels of funding and influence, so while UK counterparts such as Policy Exchange and the Institute of Public Policy Research had incomes of £4.3m in 2023-24, TBI’s turnover in 2023 was $145.3m. The institute has insisted that Ellison is just one among many major funders and its chief policy strategist, Benedict Macon-Cooney, told media that there was “no conflict of interest, and donations are ringfenced”.
The government (Department of Work and Pensions) has been working on digital IDs for several years. The idea is that people who need to apply for different benefits at different times only have to provide a secured the first time. The intention is to make life simpler for claimants.
The government (Department of Work and Pensions) has been working on digital IDs for several years. The idea is that people who need to apply for different benefits at different times only have to provide a secured the first time. The intention is to make life simpler for claimants.
This iteration of *ID cards* are being proposed as a measure against illegal immigration. They will definitionally be intended to lock down services, not facilitate access.
The government (Department of Work and Pensions) has been working on digital IDs for several years. The idea is that people who need to apply for different benefits at different times only have to provide a secured the first time. The intention is to make life simpler for claimants.
This iteration of *ID cards* are being proposed as a measure against illegal immigration. They will definitionally be intended to lock down services, not facilitate access.
And will be implemented long behind schedule and massively over-budget...
The government (Department of Work and Pensions) has been working on digital IDs for several years. The idea is that people who need to apply for different benefits at different times only have to provide a secured the first time. The intention is to make life simpler for claimants.
This iteration of *ID cards* are being proposed as a measure against illegal immigration. They will definitionally be intended to lock down services, not facilitate access.
And will be implemented long behind schedule and massively over-budget...
The "stop the boats" argument for digital ID doesn't make much sense to me. The argument seems that digital ID will make it much harder for migrants without the right to work to work. AFAICT, the digital ID won't change the requirements for employers to confirm anyone they intend to hire has the right to work in the UK, it just adds a method to do that other than checking what visa someone has in their passport - though it might make it harder for someone to claim to be a UK citizen who doesn't have a passport when they aren't. I can't see how digital ID would stop an unscrupulous employer from knowingly hiring someone without the right to work, almost certainly not paying minimum wage and NI contributions etc. If an employer is currently knowingly breaking the law then introducing digital ID isn't going to suddenly make them obey the law.
And, in relation to small boats, this measure will only make a difference to the number crossing if the majority are coming to the UK to get work, rather than to be granted asylum after which they can work to support themselves and their families. As it is, the vast majority of people crossing on small boats apply for asylum and so wouldn't be deterred from coming over even if digital ID did make it harder for them to work illegally.
The "stop the boats" argument for digital ID doesn't make much sense to me. The argument seems that digital ID will make it much harder for migrants without the right to work to work. AFAICT, the digital ID won't change the requirements for employers to confirm anyone they intend to hire has the right to work in the UK, it just adds a method to do that other than checking what visa someone has in their passport - though it might make it harder for someone to claim to be a UK citizen who doesn't have a passport when they aren't. I can't see how digital ID would stop an unscrupulous employer from knowingly hiring someone without the right to work, almost certainly not paying minimum wage and NI contributions etc.
I can sort of see how you could do it. Right now, "he showed me a document, and it looked legit" is a reasonable defence for an employer to claim. If you make the new British ID the only approved way of verifying someone's eligibility to work, it's easy to have an audit trail. So a company that claimed that John Smith showed eligibility to work would have a receipt from the government ID system showing a query against John Smith ID#123 456 789 0, and the government system would have a matching record logging the query. Perhaps each employer query is accompanied by a new photo of the person.
It doesn't stop an employer from exploiting someone who doesn't have the right to work, paying them in cash under the table, and so on, but it removes any ability they might have to claim innocence.
Generally speaking, people who employ others cash-in-hand are more likely to be evading tax than evading immigration law.
The "stop the boats" argument for digital ID doesn't make much sense to me. The argument seems that digital ID will make it much harder for migrants without the right to work to work. AFAICT, the digital ID won't change the requirements for employers to confirm anyone they intend to hire has the right to work in the UK, it just adds a method to do that other than checking what visa someone has in their passport - though it might make it harder for someone to claim to be a UK citizen who doesn't have a passport when they aren't. I can't see how digital ID would stop an unscrupulous employer from knowingly hiring someone without the right to work, almost certainly not paying minimum wage and NI contributions etc.
I can sort of see how you could do it. Right now, "he showed me a document, and it looked legit" is a reasonable defence for an employer to claim.
The proof of work for those on visas is already digital -- unless you want to suggest that there's a rash of fake passports floating around.
I should clarify that I 1) certainly do not approve of making life harder for asylum seekers or other immigrants regardless of method, and 2) do not trust the government at all. I was just thinking of how expensive and impractical it is to get photo ID for people on low incomes in general, and how the EU ID card system seems better for that. But I take the points raised by @chrisstiles and @Arethosemyfeet .
I can’t see those who Starmer wants to vote for him will like ID cards of any kind. They objected last time. If he goes ahead with it it could be the end for him.
Yes I agree it is about trust of the use of our info. The fiasco over the adult content channels has not helped in that regard.
Historically my objection to an ID card has been big government spying upon the individual. Suspect this is small beer as with the weekly news of databases being hacked the individual personal details will be shared by scanners worldwide.
I was listening to the radio whilst working yesterday morning. So by chance I caught all of Starmer's speech. Here are a few thoughts:
Firstly, the digital ID Card scheme is a very small, practical and sensible thing, I suspect. Note that it is both free and purely digital. We will have to see the real-world details, but I'm betting that it's basically a logical extension of something the government already does. If you interact with the online portals for driving licences, passports and tax, you'll see that this infrastructure already exists. Pulling this together to make a 'right to work' virtual card, is a rational and logical step that will make life easier for employers and simpler for new employees. Watch for the details but this is a technical change really. There is a political reason for making it seem like a big thing but I am very confident it isn't.
As to the speech, there are some positives and negatives in both content and presentation.
Firstly in tone, Starmer is definitely improving. He sounded authentic and purposeful. But still a bit dull.
In terms of what he actually said, there was some good and some meh and some that was terrible. In terms of the good: he pushed back properly against outright racism. He has not done this enough. More of this please.
But ultimately, he also took a pandering tone to the issue of immigration in a way that deserves some analysis, which I will come to, but is ultimately doomed to fail, in my view.
Whilst he didn't use the words "legitimate concerns," that is basically the framing that he used. To be clear, I'm going to 'steel man' this, before demolishing it.
There are people in this country who are deeply concerned about illegal immigration, (Whatever they mean by that) who are not racist in their thinking.* groomed to think this way. Mr Starmer is the Prime Minister of this country and elected by this country and believes that he cannot simply stand up and tell people that they are wrong to feel this way. This is partly a political calculation in that Sir Keir believes that a party can never approach the electorate saying "you're wrong." There is also a philosophical argument to be had about the nature of representative democracy.
If you ignore what the government has said about immigration and look only at what they have done, you get an interesting picture. The government has sped up processing of claims and done some proper work on accomadation. For example, spending on 'hotels'** for housing asylum seekers is down from £3Bn/year to £2.1Bn year! Not bad for the first year of government when the problem to a large extent exists because the previous government slow-walked processing. The one-in-one-out scheme with France is an interesting one. My main concern is that it is designed to be politically acceptable, first and foremost, rather than starting with what might actually work best. However, please note, whatever else is said, this is the first newlegal and safe route for people to claim asylum in the UK. One could argue that what the government is doing on this issue is far more important than what they say... Indeed, that may be the plan, to sound tough to the right-wing media, whilst quietly doing things better.
There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, they're not doing enough of the right things. Although I will insist that they are better than the last lot and a helluva lot better than Farage who wants to start stripping away the right to remain from people who he thinks aren't British enough.
The other problem is that he is ceding the argument to the Right and allowing their framing to stand. This is always where 'legitimate concerns' gets you. It is deeply flawed and most likely to fail.
If you are an optimist, there is a lot of Sir Keir moving in the right direction here. If you are a pessimist, then you have the problem that where he was is so bad, that this is nowhere near where he should be...
But the ID thing is small potatoes... and I remain of the view that mandatory ID cards are extremely problematic. This is not really what he's talking about here.
AFZ
*There is a fine and important nuance here and there is definitely unconscious bias and well-meaning people who end up inadvertently racist. That is true and not a point I wish to dispute, it's just a little bit beside the point here, where I am constructing the strongest version of the argument I wish to oppose.
**If you don't know why I put 'hotels' in quotation marks, you aren't paying attention.
I was listening to the radio whilst working yesterday morning. So by chance I caught all of Starmer's speech. Here are a few thoughts:
Firstly, the digital ID Card scheme is a very small, practical and sensible thing, I suspect. Note that it is both free and purely digital. We will have to see the real-world details, but I'm betting that it's basically a logical extension of something the government already does. If you interact with the online portals for driving licences, passports and tax, you'll see that this infrastructure already exists. Pulling this together to make a 'right to work' virtual card, is a rational and logical step that will make life easier for employers and simpler for new employees.
Whilst for a Brit a proof of the right work is the possession of a passport or driving licence [*], for those on visas the proof is already in digital format.
All those bits of bolded text are actually different things. There's limited integration between some of the systems in the first bolded segment, but it's far from seamless.
It's also striking that none of the ministers are using the PM's preferred line. For instance; Darren Jones, Pat McFadden, Steven Kinnock and Lisa Nandy have all explicitly stated that it would or could be used to access services (a vague term covering myriad systems with limited and variable integration with the rest of government). [In the fever dreams of the TBI your digital ID is linked to both financial transactions and the pothole reporting service].
Lastly, it's digital. How will that work given the large digital divide in the UK ? Which smart phones will it support ? For long will older smart phones stay in support? What about the homeless and asylum seekers, who may not have smart phones and frequently have their belongings stolen (leaving aside the issue that a percentage of the public think that the government just gives migrants free smartphones).
The other problem is that he is ceding the argument to the Right and allowing their framing to stand. This is always where 'legitimate concerns' gets you. It is deeply flawed and most likely to fail.
If you are an optimist, there is a lot of Sir Keir moving in the right direction here. If you are a pessimist, then you have the problem that where he was is so bad, that this is nowhere near where he should be...
The day before his speech, he wrote this column in the Telegraph:
"There is no doubt that for years, Left-wing parties, including my own, did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration.
Equally, the belief that uncontrolled legal migration was nothing but good news for an economy should never have been accepted on the Left"
When? When was this period of 'uncontrolled legal migration' ? [Minor point; given he has rejected both the Labour *and* Conservative models of migration in the column, has he given much thought to how this impacts his choice of possible growth models?]. Does he believe that no one is capable of reading his column and listening to his speech?
Similarly, when Reform announced plans to deport all ILR holders, Downing Street's response was to question the expense - which is really 'I don't see how they'd manufacture that amount of gas' levels of quibbling.
When you cede the argument to the right by adopting their framing you are facing in the wrong direction, as such, the question of movement is moot.
[*] It's more complex than this in practice, and there are some other forms of acceptable ID for those who have neither.
A driving licence isn’t evidence of right to work. If you’re a UK citizen and you don’t have a passport (current or expired), then you have to produce your birth certificate, and an official document showing your National Insurance number.
A driving licence isn’t evidence of right to work. If you’re a UK citizen and you don’t have a passport (current or expired), then you have to produce your birth certificate, and an official document showing your National Insurance number.
Yeah, you're right, birth, adoption or naturalisation certificate.
Comments
And I can't imagine the reaction would have been so bland or equivocal if they'd been talking about the Shadow Home Secretary in 2022 rather than the occupant of the same post in 2017. Whether that's racism, factionalism, or both I couldn't say.
And even there, there's been a lot of discussion recently about putting celebrities (who will be contractually obliged to do interviews as part of promo tours) through inappropriate questions or games, where interviewers are more interested in a clip going viral than being appropriate or asking interesting questions. Someone being a celebrity and having nominally chosen to be there doesn't excuse sexual harassment or inappropriate questions.
I'm not sure why you are insisting that the messages were about a game of 'Snog, Marry, Avoid', you can see from the link that they aren't.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/18/donald-trump-state-visit-uk-keir-starmer-labour-politics-latest-news
Also I twitch a bit at the inclusion of "prosperity" in the title. It makes me think "co-prosperity sphere".
It's going to presage a number of deals where ministers allow private companies into the heart of the state in exchange for some magic AI beans.
It's unpalatable but I don't think Starmer and Co had any option but to roll out the red carpet and play the royalty card.
I'd rather see investment in green technology rather than AI provided we don't get dirty great big pylons subverting the effect by marching the renewable energy all over the countryside.
But how would pylons make energy less green? Environmental protection isn't about preserving the looks of the countryside - indeed, a lot of problems are caused by people's ideas of what the countryside "should" look like being based on intensive sheep grazing rather than unimproved wetlands. Pylons and solar farms etc aren't harmful to the environment.
You have a choice - pylons or very expensive underground cables. There really isn't an option C.
It's not just about the generation - it's also about getting enough electricity to where it's needed to replace fossil fuels.
I think that depends on how expensive. I seem to recall the figure being in the region of 10-20 times as much. I struggle to envisage storms in the normal lifetime of the cables that would require every pylon and cable to be replaced even once, never mind 10 times or more.
That certainly used to be the case - perhaps there's new technology for boring through rock and feeding a cable through? But at any rate "burying" by digging isn't an option.
Burying transmission lines is significantly more expensive over the lifetime of grid than using cables (often by an order of magnitude), repair - while rarer - is much more expensive, and heat dissipation is a real issue -- most installations rely on being in soil that is moist at least some of the time, as water conducts the heat away - as the lifetime/utility of the cable drops correspondingly as it heats up.
https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/sustainability-and-climate-change/iet-electricity-transmission-technologies-report
A Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbynite and a Starmerite walk into a Manchester bar during conference…
The barman says ‘what are you drinking Andy?’
Looks like it's contagious.
Post-Windrush a lot of people will have concerns about something that's purely (or even largely) digital, and if they are really planning on calling it 'Brit Card' I see a Northern Ireland shaped hole in that.
Why have a parallel system ?
Less well for ethnic minorities, as several decades of studies show. E.g:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.1998.9976642
There may be good things about ID cards, but as a means for enforcing immigration status (which is the trailer) there's a whole set of disasters waiting to happen.
Oh hell, you've just made me realise what should have been obvious: these will include ("biological") sex and the toilet police will be able to demand them at will. A veritable piss-port.
Passports are wildly impractical - they're made of paper, and easy to damage, especially if they get a bit wet. If you damage it, it becomes useless, but you generally don't find this out until you show up at the airport, because small, hard-to-notice bits of damage count as "damage".
It would, presumably, be possible to generate a passport from the ID card record, without requiring additional paperwork.
Also, you could do what supermarkets do with their loyalty cards, you have the main and then a key ring with a barcode that links to the details.
So you could have passports issued with a scannable thing you carry around most of the time - that links to the digital file of your passport held by the government when scanned.
As an aside: it's worth underlining the scope of the TBI and it's sources of funding:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/09/inside-the-tony-blair-institute
This iteration of *ID cards* are being proposed as a measure against illegal immigration. They will definitionally be intended to lock down services, not facilitate access.
And will be implemented long behind schedule and massively over-budget...
Very probably by a company owned by this guy (to cross multiple threads, including the one on the Rapture): https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/technology/article/palantir-founder-peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-religion-qzmpth35t
And, in relation to small boats, this measure will only make a difference to the number crossing if the majority are coming to the UK to get work, rather than to be granted asylum after which they can work to support themselves and their families. As it is, the vast majority of people crossing on small boats apply for asylum and so wouldn't be deterred from coming over even if digital ID did make it harder for them to work illegally.
I thought that had largely been stopped which was why they were resorting to boats?
One can only ascertain this after the fact.
I can sort of see how you could do it. Right now, "he showed me a document, and it looked legit" is a reasonable defence for an employer to claim. If you make the new British ID the only approved way of verifying someone's eligibility to work, it's easy to have an audit trail. So a company that claimed that John Smith showed eligibility to work would have a receipt from the government ID system showing a query against John Smith ID#123 456 789 0, and the government system would have a matching record logging the query. Perhaps each employer query is accompanied by a new photo of the person.
It doesn't stop an employer from exploiting someone who doesn't have the right to work, paying them in cash under the table, and so on, but it removes any ability they might have to claim innocence.
Generally speaking, people who employ others cash-in-hand are more likely to be evading tax than evading immigration law.
The proof of work for those on visas is already digital -- unless you want to suggest that there's a rash of fake passports floating around.
Yes I agree it is about trust of the use of our info. The fiasco over the adult content channels has not helped in that regard.
Firstly, the digital ID Card scheme is a very small, practical and sensible thing, I suspect. Note that it is both free and purely digital. We will have to see the real-world details, but I'm betting that it's basically a logical extension of something the government already does. If you interact with the online portals for driving licences, passports and tax, you'll see that this infrastructure already exists. Pulling this together to make a 'right to work' virtual card, is a rational and logical step that will make life easier for employers and simpler for new employees. Watch for the details but this is a technical change really. There is a political reason for making it seem like a big thing but I am very confident it isn't.
As to the speech, there are some positives and negatives in both content and presentation.
Firstly in tone, Starmer is definitely improving. He sounded authentic and purposeful. But still a bit dull.
In terms of what he actually said, there was some good and some meh and some that was terrible. In terms of the good: he pushed back properly against outright racism. He has not done this enough. More of this please.
But ultimately, he also took a pandering tone to the issue of immigration in a way that deserves some analysis, which I will come to, but is ultimately doomed to fail, in my view.
Whilst he didn't use the words "legitimate concerns," that is basically the framing that he used. To be clear, I'm going to 'steel man' this, before demolishing it.
There are people in this country who are deeply concerned about illegal immigration, (Whatever they mean by that) who are not racist in their thinking.* groomed to think this way. Mr Starmer is the Prime Minister of this country and elected by this country and believes that he cannot simply stand up and tell people that they are wrong to feel this way. This is partly a political calculation in that Sir Keir believes that a party can never approach the electorate saying "you're wrong." There is also a philosophical argument to be had about the nature of representative democracy.
If you ignore what the government has said about immigration and look only at what they have done, you get an interesting picture. The government has sped up processing of claims and done some proper work on accomadation. For example, spending on 'hotels'** for housing asylum seekers is down from £3Bn/year to £2.1Bn year! Not bad for the first year of government when the problem to a large extent exists because the previous government slow-walked processing. The one-in-one-out scheme with France is an interesting one. My main concern is that it is designed to be politically acceptable, first and foremost, rather than starting with what might actually work best. However, please note, whatever else is said, this is the first new legal and safe route for people to claim asylum in the UK. One could argue that what the government is doing on this issue is far more important than what they say... Indeed, that may be the plan, to sound tough to the right-wing media, whilst quietly doing things better.
There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, they're not doing enough of the right things. Although I will insist that they are better than the last lot and a helluva lot better than Farage who wants to start stripping away the right to remain from people who he thinks aren't British enough.
The other problem is that he is ceding the argument to the Right and allowing their framing to stand. This is always where 'legitimate concerns' gets you. It is deeply flawed and most likely to fail.
If you are an optimist, there is a lot of Sir Keir moving in the right direction here. If you are a pessimist, then you have the problem that where he was is so bad, that this is nowhere near where he should be...
But the ID thing is small potatoes... and I remain of the view that mandatory ID cards are extremely problematic. This is not really what he's talking about here.
AFZ
*There is a fine and important nuance here and there is definitely unconscious bias and well-meaning people who end up inadvertently racist. That is true and not a point I wish to dispute, it's just a little bit beside the point here, where I am constructing the strongest version of the argument I wish to oppose.
**If you don't know why I put 'hotels' in quotation marks, you aren't paying attention.
Whilst for a Brit a proof of the right work is the possession of a passport or driving licence [*], for those on visas the proof is already in digital format.
All those bits of bolded text are actually different things. There's limited integration between some of the systems in the first bolded segment, but it's far from seamless.
It's also striking that none of the ministers are using the PM's preferred line. For instance; Darren Jones, Pat McFadden, Steven Kinnock and Lisa Nandy have all explicitly stated that it would or could be used to access services (a vague term covering myriad systems with limited and variable integration with the rest of government). [In the fever dreams of the TBI your digital ID is linked to both financial transactions and the pothole reporting service].
Lastly, it's digital. How will that work given the large digital divide in the UK ? Which smart phones will it support ? For long will older smart phones stay in support? What about the homeless and asylum seekers, who may not have smart phones and frequently have their belongings stolen (leaving aside the issue that a percentage of the public think that the government just gives migrants free smartphones).
The day before his speech, he wrote this column in the Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/25/the-left-ignored-immigration-fears-for-too-long/
"There is no doubt that for years, Left-wing parties, including my own, did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration.
Equally, the belief that uncontrolled legal migration was nothing but good news for an economy should never have been accepted on the Left"
When? When was this period of 'uncontrolled legal migration' ? [Minor point; given he has rejected both the Labour *and* Conservative models of migration in the column, has he given much thought to how this impacts his choice of possible growth models?]. Does he believe that no one is capable of reading his column and listening to his speech?
Similarly, when Reform announced plans to deport all ILR holders, Downing Street's response was to question the expense - which is really 'I don't see how they'd manufacture that amount of gas' levels of quibbling.
When you cede the argument to the right by adopting their framing you are facing in the wrong direction, as such, the question of movement is moot.
[*] It's more complex than this in practice, and there are some other forms of acceptable ID for those who have neither.
Yeah, you're right, birth, adoption or naturalisation certificate.