Starmer’s Surveillance State

Keir Starmer’s casual announcement about digital ID cards should concern every British citizen. What he frames as a simple immigration-control measure is a part of a surveillance state that would make George Orwell weep.

The Prime Minister insists that things have “moved on” since Tony Blair’s failed ID card scheme, and he’s quite right, but it’s toward something far worse. Digital identity systems don’t just verify who you are, but can be used to track everything you do: every purchase, every journey, and every interaction with government services gets logged, stored, and analyzed. What begins as immigration enforcement inevitably becomes universal monitoring. The pattern is depressingly predictable. Governments often introduce intrusive systems by targeting unpopular groups first: illegal immigrants today, benefit claimants tomorrow, and then everyone else. Each expansion feels reasonable in isolation, but when viewed together, it forms a cage, and by the time the majority notice the bars, the lock has already clicked shut.

China offers the clearest warning of where this leads. Their social credit system began modestly enough, tracking financial behavior and court judgments. Now it monitors everything from jaywalking to online comments. Citizens with low scores can’t buy train tickets, book hotels, or send their children to good schools. It’s behavioral control disguised as public service. The Chinese model isn’t some distant dystopian fantasy. It’s an operational reality affecting 1.4 billion people. Their digital ID system feeds directly into social-credit algorithms: one database with infinite applications, and the infrastructure that Starmer proposes would create the same foundation here.

Western democracies aren’t immune to this mission creep. Canada’s digital ID pilots began with healthcare access but expanded rapidly during COVID-19. Citizens found themselves locked out of essential services without proper digital credentials. Australia’s MyGov system, initially for tax and benefits, now manages everything from university applications to vaccine certificates. Even ostensibly democratic governments can’t resist the temptation to expand surveillance systems once they exist. The infrastructure is too powerful, the data too valuable, and the leverage too seductive. The more they monitor the masses, the easier it is to manage the masses, and the easier it is to pre-empt dissent and shape society according to their designs.

Through Britain’s proposed digital currency, Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) would give authorities complete visibility into every transaction. Combined with digital ID, programmable cash would allow governments not only to see what you spend but to decide how you spend it. Buy the wrong book, visit the wrong website, or donate to the wrong cause, and every choice could be flagged, frozen, or forbidden. What begins as convenience ends as control.

The power to freeze accounts becomes the power to destroy lives. We’ve already seen this with Canadian truckers during the Freedom Convoy protests. Their bank accounts were frozen without trial, and their livelihoods jeopardized by bureaucratic decree. Cash provides anonymity and independence. The transition from one to the other isn’t technological evolution, but the end of financial privacy.

Starmer claims that public attitudes toward digital ID have changed since Blair’s era. Polls suggest 57% of Britons support national ID cards, but support built on ignorance isn’t meaningful consent. Most people don’t understand what they’re endorsing. They imagine a simple digital version of a driver’s license. The reality is a comprehensive tracking system that monitors their entire existence, and the same polls show massive concerns about data security and implementation — concerns that are entirely justified.

Britain’s cybersecurity record is abysmal. The NHS has suffered repeated breaches, government departments routinely lose laptops containing sensitive data, and local councils leave databases exposed online. These are the institutions that Starmer wants to trust with everyone’s biometric information.

Data breaches aren’t minor inconveniences when they involve biometric data. You can change your password or cancel your credit card but you can’t change your fingerprints or facial features. Once biometric data is stolen, the theft is permanent. Imagine being locked out of your bank account because a criminal is using your face to get in, or being denied access to services because your fingerprints match someone on a watchlist. The victim is compromised forever.

The UK government lacks both the competence to secure such systems and the restraint to limit their use. Every database becomes a honeypot for criminals and a tool for authoritarians. The bigger the database, the bigger the target, and the worse the eventual breach.

Digital ID also enables perfect discrimination. Algorithms can identify and exclude people based on any criteria programmers choose. Race, religion, political views, and sexual orientation can all become grounds for automated exclusion. Britons should reject digital ID not because they oppose immigration enforcement, but because they value their freedom. Some conveniences cost too much. Some securities aren’t worth the price. And some so-called modernizations lead not forward, but back into bondage.