When purveyor of “luxury communism” Ash Sarkar of Novara media was asked on the BBC a few weeks ago what she thought about Tony Blair’s possible involvement with a post – war Gaza, she answered ‘I guess it is because Satan was unavailable.’
For once, I agree with the communist.
There is nothing that unites both the left and the right in the UK more than their outright loathing of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is the opposite of the King: a unifying figure which all right minded British citizens love to hate.
Last week, Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced that “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have a digital ID.” You’d be hard pressed to find anyone on either the left or right in the UK who is on board with this compulsory Digital ID fandango, brain child of Blair.
The left are deeply suspicious of Tony Blair, the Tony Blair Institute and Blair’s link to Tech billionaire Larry Ellison. Ellison is head of a company called Oracle. He has amassed a fortune of at least $400 billion. According to the left wing bible The New Statesman “Ellison’s Oracle has major commercial interests at stake in the question of which companies get access to Britain’s most valuable data.”
“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…. TBI’s turnover in 2023 was $145.3m.” The Prime Minister that brought you the Iraq war is back for his sequel: the Compulsory Digital ID Scheme. The TBI has long promoted a digital ID scheme, Blair brought in voluntary ID cards when he was Prime Minister. It was abolished soon after. Now with Labour back in office, Blair has seen his opportunity.
You may well be asking what this has got to do with the Irish. Quite a lot. It remains the case that courtesy of the Common Travel Area many Irish go to the UK to work. All they have to do is secure a National Insurance Number and it’s no further questions asked.
If it is the case that Irish citizens will soon need a digital ID to work in the UK then your data is up for grabs and put on sale in the same as any British citizen. You are never asked to show your passport when you arrive at Gatwick airport from a Dublin flight, so the idea the British state could demand a digital ID from you in order to work is objectionable to say the least.
This is being sold as a way to tackle illegal immigration. If you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. Why is it always the case that when it comes to tackling illegal immigration they can never just stop the illegal immigrants from coming or indeed shipping them out when they arrive? Instead the plan is to put limits or burdens on the law abiding citizens.
So you can’t turn the boats around that are sailing over from Calais, that just seems too difficult, but the British state will demand that you, law – abiding citizen hand them over various forms of data, in order to work. I don’t think so.
Britain currently has up to 1 million illegal immigrants. Many are known to the authorities but are not deported. Even when deportation orders are issued they are often successfully challenged in the court, because of their human rights. Now PM Starmer is proposing to breach the human rights of the law-abiding British citizen, by refusing to let them work in their own country, unless they consent to this ‘compulsory digital ID system.’
Why are we to accept that a state that cannot stop people breaking into the country nor deport any of these illegal immigrants can run this ID scheme with competence. We are to believe that the British State, who cannot even manage their own borders even though they are an island, will be able to manage and hold the details of millions of its citizens in a secure database. What absolute nonsense is this?
Starmer announcing this scheme said ‘For too many years it has been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy, and remain here illegally.’ So why not make it harder to come to Britain? Also, people don’t just object to the shadow economy but to illegal immigrants not working being housed in hotels. This digital ID/Control scheme will do nothing to stop that. You already need a national insurance number to work in the UK, yet black market employers don’t require that if they ‘hire’ illegal immigrants. Why they would suddenly demand a digital ID when using illegal black market labour seems unclear. The whole system is ridiculous and fails to stand up to even minimal scrutiny.
Starmer went on to say that ‘every nation needs to have control over its border.’ And the answer to this is not to control who comes in but to control the law abiding citizen that lives there. This is what the digital ID scheme is really about: controlling the law – abiding citizens. This scheme is, as Konstantin Kisin says, about building control infrastructure. The British state under the Premiership of Keir Starmer has spent the last year locking up people for Facebook posts and wrong – Tweets. So what’s to stop them in the future from turning off your digital ID should you post something not to their liking?
As for the fools who say well private companies hold a lot of our data on our buying habits, sure this is true. And that’s bad enough. The idea that potentially huge amounts of personal data, including health data, could be centralised by the State and that your right to work would depend on you having a digital ID is much worse than Dunnes Stores or Sainsbury’s knowing you like to buy Tayto or Walkers crisps.
Then there is the security risk by non- state actors. In August this year there was a review by Cabinet Office in the UK into 11 public sector data breaches, including HMRC (the tax people), the Metropolitan police, the benefits system and the Ministry of Defence. In 2023 there was a leak of personal data of about 10,000 serving officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. In April 2025, there was a cyber-attack on the UK’s Legal Aid Agency’s online digital services, which holds a ginormous amount of data on people involved in the justice system.
(Above. Keir Starmer sets out why Britain needs a compulsory digital ID scheme. ‘Because immigration’.)
In July, Marks and Spencer was subject to a cyber-attack in the UK. And it wasn’t just your preference for their overpriced sushi and ever reliable undergarments the attacks acquired. “M&S admitted some personal customer data was taken during the attack. It says information stolen could include contact details such as people’s names, home addresses, phone numbers or email addresses, as well as dates of birth and online order history.”
If you want to hand over your data to the State or carry around a digital ID that must be stored on a mobile phone, then you are a fool. This is the latest exercise in state control, where governments could in an instant deprive you of your right to work should it take their fancy. It must be opposed by all right-thinking people.