They can soften the language, but dystopia is still on the agenda.
CAM WAKEFIELD
By now, you’ve probably heard: The British Labour government is not bringing in mandatory digital ID. Rejoice! The freedom-loving Brit can breathe easy again, safe in the knowledge that no one will be asked to wave some creepy state-issued QR code at the pub. Or the supermarket. Or the job center. Except, well…they sort of will.
According to The Times, Labour is quietly yanking back the explicit demand for a national digital ID, but it’s the same way a magician might yank a tablecloth while keeping the cutlery exactly where it was.
They make it look like the plan has changed. But we’re still marching briskly into the warm digital embrace of compulsory identity checks.
No Digital ID? No Problem. You Still Can’t Work Without One
Let’s not kid ourselves. This isn’t about scrapping the system. It’s about calling it something else so the voters don’t kick up a fuss.
People will still be subject to what are being called “mandatory digital checks for right to work” under the current plans.
Reading more closely, a government source told The Times that “mandatory digital checks” are necessary. “There will be checks, which will be digital and mandatory,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said today in the House of Commons.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “We are saying that you will need mandatory digital ID to be able to work in the UK. Now the difference is whether that has to be one piece of ID, a digital ID card, or whether it could be an e-visa or an e-passport, and we’re pretty relaxed about what form that takes.”
And there it is. The oldest bureaucratic trick in the book: declare a system broken, then quietly replace it with something ten times more controlling, but dress it up as progress.
So you don’t have to carry a digital ID. It’s not mandatory. But if you want a job, you’d better have the digital credentials to prove your worth.
The Great Rebrand: Compulsion Without the PR Headache
One unnamed official even said this latest rhetorical pivot was designed to “deflate one of the main points of contention.” Avoid boiling the blood of the electorate even further by doing the same thing, just with softer language.
They added, “We do not want to risk there being cases of some 65-year-old in a rural area being barred from working because he hasn’t installed the ID.” How thoughtful.
This whole “mandatory checks” versus “mandatory use” semantic judo is precisely the kind of thing that gets ministers nodding sagely in Whitehall while everyone else wonders what planet they’re on.
They didn’t eat the cake; they just “redistributed its contents through direct oral engagement.”
The end result is the same. As soon as digital ID exists, people will be pressured into it.
Despite claims that digital ID can be optional, company directors in the UK are now being effectively forced to use it.
Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, from November 2025 all directors must verify their identity to legally act in their role, and the default method is via GOV.UK’s digital ID One Login system.
This government wants everyone on digital ID one way or another.
The truly galling part is that all of this is happening with the usual platitudes about “consultation.” A spokesperson said that ministers have “always been clear” that full details will follow “a full public consultation.” Which, in Westminster-speak, is usually code for: “We’ll tell you what we’ve already decided, then ignore your opinion,” just like they did with the debate over the new censorship law, the Online Safety Act.
Public support for digital ID has fallen sharply. When people really learn about the long-term consequences, they seem to wake up. Polling last year showed a steep drop in approval, and an online petition opposing the digital ID plan gathered almost three million signatures.
Make no mistakes about this new “non-mandatory” digital ID propaganda that’s out in the news right now. While they assure us that no one will require a digital ID, they’re building a world where not having one turns your daily life into a slow-motion punishment.
It’ll be coercion by inconvenience.
Welcome to the Slow Lane, Citizen
Take airports. In the United States, for example, you technically don’t have to use the biometric fast lanes. But try not using them. The people with facial scans and “trusted traveler” clearance breeze through like they’re on a travel ad.
Meanwhile, everyone else is funneled into a neglected, sluggish line patrolled by a single, visibly exhausted border agent.
The more you resist enrollment, the longer your wait. And since nothing says “security” like punishing the innocent for existing, the “random” secondary screening always seems to find its way to the folks who opted out.
The Transportation Security Administration in the US practically wrote the playbook: say it’s voluntary, then make the alternative unbearable.
Miss a flight or two because the manual ID lane moves slower than tectonic plates, and you’ll be scanning your irises faster than you can say “civil liberties.”
The Line is the Punishment
Here’s how it works: instead of making enrollment mandatory, they just make life worse for people who say no. Time becomes the cudgel. Every choice comes with a cost in minutes, hours, or lost opportunity.
Need to get into a venue? The express line is digital ID only.
Age Checks: The Digital Trojan Horse
It started with just adult content. Alcohol. Vaping. Gambling. Now it’s even to access to social media under some authoritarian laws (we’re looking at you, Australia).
You name it; every move on the internet is suddenly a proving ground for your identity, tying everything you say and view to you real-world ID. Age verification laws arrive draped in moral concern, but underneath it all, they’re laying the tracks for a digital ID system no one asked for.
They’ll insist there are alternatives, right up until the moment there aren’t. Once a government digital ID exists, sites no longer need to dance around the issue.
They can simply require it. No upload option. No fallback. No fiddly workaround involving a photo of a passport taken on a cracked phone camera. Just a blunt message on the screen: verify with your government digital ID to continue. It will be framed as compliance, safety, or liability management.
Platforms will shrug and blame regulation. And that’s the trick. The state doesn’t have to force anyone to enroll when the internet itself does the job for them. Once digital ID exists, more places will demand it.
What about trying to buy a bottle of wine at a self-checkout? Stores will start pushing digital ID verification to make the process faster and easier.
Without a digital ID, you might as well ask to pay with pebbles.
Retailers are quietly re-engineering shopping so that identity is baked into the process. Self-checkouts won’t clear unless the system can scan you. Alcohol purchases will require digital approval. Manual lanes? Oh, they exist, all one of them, but the cashier is also covering returns, cleaning up aisle four, and having a nervous breakdown.
You’re not banned from shopping. You’re just herded toward the system that knows who you are and what you buy. For your convenience, of course.
Banking, Broken on Purpose
You can still have a bank account without a digital ID, technically. But the moment you want to transfer more than a bus fare, you’ll hit a wall.
Transaction limits will be lower. Payments are slower. Account freezes drag on for days unless you’re verified, at which point, everything resolves with miraculous speed. It’s like the difference between writing a check in 1972 and using Apple Pay.
People will just enroll. Not because they trust the system, but because they want to access their own money without feeling like a criminal on remand.
So, there you have it. No official digital ID. Just mandatory digital checks for work. Maybe housing. Maybe banking. But not a mandatory digital ID. Definitely not.
This is how it happens. Not with a diktat, not with a vote, not even with a proper debate. Just a slow, quiet redesign of daily life so that refusing the ID doesn’t make you brave. It makes you late, broke, locked out, and eventually invisible.
So no, digital ID isn’t always mandatory. But as soon as one is introduced, and you don’t have one? Enjoy waiting in line. You’ll be there a while.
This article (The Myth of the UK’s Axed Mandatory Digital ID Plans) was created and published by Reclaim the Net and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Cam Wakefield
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