“BritCard” – Inside Labour’s “Progressive” Digital ID

…which tells you most of what you need to know, without even bothering to read the body of the text. But, unfortunately, “bothering to read the body of the text” is a pretty accurate summary of my job description, so on we must plough.

I would note that even in using the word “progressive”, the authors demonstrate a remarkable ability to be out of touch. That word’s hay day is long over, and it has been regarded with scepticism if not outright suspicion by most thinking people for a long time. As we mentioned above, it betrays an almost old-fashioned tone more in keeping with the politics of a previous generation.

The report is 28 pages long, but once you remove the double-talk and graphs, it can essentially be summed up in three bullet points:

1. Digital ID will help control illegal immigration.
2. It can then be expanded to other things, too.
3. Polls say everyone is fine with this.

Points 1 & 2 tell us how this rollout is going to go. The “BritCard” will be introduced, primarily, as a part of a “strategy to tackle illegal migration” [page 8]:

Given the very significant political and delivery benefits, moderate costs and the deliverability of this policy, the Government should announce as early as possible in Summer 2025 its intention to explore introducing a digital right-to-work and right-to-rent credential, as part of its plan to tackle illegal migration.

This will include the new legislation required that will make “BritCard” the only way to apply for a job or find a place to live [page 25]. Employers and landlords will be forced to use it.

Then, once that is in place, it will expand to include other services [page 14]:

Over time, the same system used to support the right-to-work and right-to-rent credentials could underpin many other features, allowing users to access and use a wide range of data and attributes generated by interacting with the public sector. For instance, the digital driving license and associated data, a proof of age feature, and healthcare records could be accessed and shared at the user’s discretion via BritCard.

Much like the smoking ban, the plan is to introduce it gradually…

The BritCard would be made available from a given date (say 1 September 2027), and made compulsory for all workers, tenants, employers and landlords to use from a later date (say 1 March 2028). It would have a gradual effect since only a small proportion of the population signs a new employment contract or rental agreement each year. We recommend that the credential is made mandatory for new employment and rental contracts signed following the introduction date. We do not recommend obliging employers and landlords to re-check all existing employees and tenants, to avoid creating unnecessary disruption and costs

What’s interesting is that, while this is supposedly a report written by “tech advisors”, in many ways it’s more like an internal memo from an advertising agency. It’s about selling a system that essentially already exists in piecemeal form under a unifying rebrand to make it seem “eye-catching”.

To support better awareness and uptake of the new credentials, the Gov.UK App and Gov.UK Wallet could be relaunched as the “BritCard App”. This would create an eye-catching, memorable brand

All the while, pump the media space with marketing to sell the concept as normal or even “familiar”:

By introducing a mandatory, universal, national identity credential the Labour Government has the opportunity to build a new piece of civic infrastructure, something that would become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country.

That kind of sentiment – the casual creepiness of the liberal tyrant – is interspersed throughout. Phrases that no doubt seemed benign to the author in the writing, but appear decidedly ominous in the reading.

This, for example:

For a progressive society to work, it needs to be able to collectively agree who is allowed to join it

Disregarding the very poor English, the sentiment is…off-putting.

Very poor English is another recurring theme. It is, honestly, barely literate in places, to the point it is entirely believable it was AI-generated using prompts.

As for the polls showing “widespread public support” for the plan, well, we can disregard them.

Polls are malleable. They are a tool to market pre-existing policy rather than steer undecided policy. Labour Together apparently did their own polling and – shockingly – found that most people agree with them.

Those are the general points; in terms of specifics, the report is fairly threadbare. There is very little in the way of technical analysis; indeed, there’s very little in the way of understanding of reality.

For example, the report stresses – multiple times – that the proposed digital identity would be “mandatory, universal and free of charge”, without ever processing that you can’t make a smartphone app mandatory without making smartphones themselves mandatory. And while they may be ubiquitous, they are currently far from universal.

The report pays lip service to “in person support channels” for “non-smartphone owners and those with low digital-skills”, but doesn’t ever actually try to explain how that could practically work.

But of course none of that really matters to the intended audience.

Reports like this don’t exist to inform or convince, they’re only meant to echo the opinions of people who already agree with their conclusions. They don’t really exist to be read at all, they exist to be referenced.

A jumping off point for articles like Polly Toynbee’s in yesterday’s Guardian.

It is not an argument, it is an excuse to turn a made-up poll into a hyperlink. A source for source’s sake. A Wikipedia footnote they know most people will never click.

Further, it is a part of a process that must be seen to take place to maintain the illusion of political cause and effect. If it appears slapdash and lazy, that’s largely because it is. A token effort required to tick a box.

This is our desired outcome, we need some research to recommend that we do it.

And, hey presto, here it is.

Summary

In closing, we should ask “what does this report tell us about digital ID we didn’t already know?”

And the answer is a little, not a lot. We already new digital ID schemes were inevitable, and would likely be pushed through (in the UK anyway) as an answer to illegal immigration.

What this report shows us is the marketing strategy for the coming year, and it’s fairly simple:

• Rebrand digital ID to a friendly-sounding name.
• Introduce it for a specific purpose on a hot-button issue.
• Make it mandatory for that purpose.
• Slowly add more optional services.
• Gradually make them mandatory too.

Which we could probably have figured out, but it’s always nice to get things in writing.

One more thing…

I want to leave you with a simple question. The final sentence of the report is a recommendation that the government should…

Hire a very senior, high-profile and experienced political figure head or tech sector professional to be the cross-government champion and external face of its digital identity programme

I know enough about the workings of these things to know that this sentence would not be there if the author(s) didn’t have a shortlist of names in mind, if not one specific person.

Who do you think the high-profile political “figure head”(sic) could be?