"Yet for all its talk of renewal and confronting the politics of grievance, Friday's speech a warmup for what will be a longer argument at Labour's forthcoming party conference still sounded oddly like a surrender to Reform's theory of where it all supposedly went wrong. Both New Labour and their Tory successors were too relaxed about legal immigration, Starmer suggested, and the left in particular has shied away from the argument about controlling Britain's borders."
"Identity cards are not a new or even particularly radical idea. They're widely accepted in Europe French politicians have long argued that a British equivalent could help cut small boat crossings, if they made it harder for people smugglers to promise a job on arrival and Tony Blair came close to introducing them as prime minister, though he billed them more as a means of easily accessing public services than a punitive measure."
A centre-left proposal would require smartphone digital IDs to verify work eligibility, framed as a response to immigration and wage undercutting. The plan echoes past hostile-environment measures and debates over identity cards, with European examples and Tony Blair's near-introduction cited. The meteoric rise of a far-right party makes such measures politically attractive but risky, since newly created powers could be repurposed by that party. The policy aims to deter small boat crossings and people-smuggling promises of work, while raising concerns about civil liberties and the expansion of state control over daily life.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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