Issue: 18 December 2004

All of us, from time to time, experience crises of confidence — an existential or maybe drunken suspicion that our lives are empty and meaningless, nothing more than a random agglomeration of sombre, interminable days, each of which is drizzled in misery. At times like this we even begin to doubt that we are who we say we are; our very existence becomes a fragile and tenuous thing, like the surface tension of water. Am I really Rod Liddle? Please tell me, where’s the proof, where’s the proof?

This is about the only thing one can say in favour of Mr Blunkett’s plan to issue us with ‘compulsory’ identity cards. At least, then, during such crises, we could reach into our jacket pockets and receive instant, independent verification. And if we were still plagued with horrible doubt, we could pop along to the local nick and have our eyes and fingers biometrically tested. ‘Yep,’ the desk sergeant would say, viewing the results and shaking his head sadly, ‘I’m afraid you are definitely Rod Liddle. And the best of bloody British, mate.’

There’s nothing else to be said for them, is there? And yet now we learn that the Conservative party has decided that they’re probably a good thing, all things considered. David Davis has jumped off the fence at last and issued his ‘qualified’ support for ID cards, but warned that ‘immense practical problems must be overcome’. Oh, David. You mutt. Why did you give in? Have some spine — and principle. You try to hang Blunkett over some piddling infraction of the rules of the House of Commons and then let him get away with this. And worse, you then continue the new exciting Conservative policy of having-your-cake-and-eating-it by warning that the ID cards may be difficult to put into practice. Of course they won’t have a practical effect in the war against crime or the war against terror or the war against drugs or any other war we’re currently engaged in, of which more later. But that’s not really the main point, is it?

Steve Norris, the former Conservative candidate for mayor of London, is against ID cards. He said, ‘The defining characteristic of a Conservative is a belief in the right of the individual to live his life free from unnecessary interference by the state.’ Precisely. Remove that and — these days — what’s left? Why would we vote Conservative if that little principle is expunged? Because we like Theresa May’s leopard-skin kitten heels? Or are in thrall to John Redwood’s charisma?

At least 25 Conservative MPs seem opposed to the party’s line on ID cards, including no fewer than ten front-bench spokespeople such as Oliver Letwin and the excellent Tim Yeo. One of the Tories opposed is the former secretary of state for social security, Peter Lilley. He points out that illegal immigrants almost always claim asylum and that once they have done so they are required (since 1993, in fact) to carry identity cards which then entitle them to claim benefits. When the public is asked why it is in favour of ID cards, it says en masse (of which more later): asylum-seekers. Well, they already have them.

The public also worries about benefit fraud. But, as Lilley points out, a minuscule proportion of benefit fraud comes as a result of forged ID — between 1 and 2 per cent.

Lilley is also insistent that large-scale biometric testing simply does not work. Can you imagine the bureaucracy involved in issuing 60 million people with ID cards? The terrible mistakes? The length of the queue to the call centre as you query the fact that, in a spot check, a copper has run your eyeballs through the computer and come to the conclusion that actually, you’re Kenneth Noye or Lord Lucan?

And Lilley adds — as if it should be necessary to do so — that unless it is compulsory to carry your ID card at all times, the scheme is pointless. How does he know this? Because he commissioned a green paper to consider the whole shebang when he was in office. ‘They are a stupid idea,’ he told the House of Commons. One assumes that Michael Howard was listening.

I suspect that the Conservative party — low on confidence and faring in the opinion polls a little like Paula Radcliffe fared in the Athens noonday heat — wished to be seen as being dead ‘tough on crime’, regardless of whether or not the ID cards will actually be ‘tough on crime’.

Public support for the cards, mind, may have been overestimated. In the latest opinion poll, only 34 per cent of people gave their unequivocal support to the notion. It is true that the largest tranche of those polled said that they would put up with ID cards if they were foisted upon them, a bit like one puts up with gay Irish comedians when they are incessantly foisted upon us. The only thing one can learn from such polling is that while there is a solid, authoritarian third of the country which wants us all lined up and counted and photographed, the remainder either don’t know or are clearly willing to be persuaded that identity cards are an affront to the notion of civil liberty. But who, other than the Liberal Democrats, will be brave enough to do the persuading?

I suppose there must be lots of elderly Tories in the shires worried about being mugged, raped, burgled or blown up by Islamic nutters — so much so that they will grasp at anything, no matter how utterly useless, to counter such threats. It is a triumph of this government that so many people are convinced they are about to be murdered in their beds by any number of wicked and implacable enemies, internal and external. And I suppose that some people might sign up to my colleague Mark Steyn’s loathsome dictum that one of the key measures of a society’s health is how easily you can insulate yourself from its underclass. If you’ve ever wondered why the USA has such appalling social problems and is so atomised a society, despite its enormous wealth, there’s part of your answer. But I digress. The point here is that identity cards will not insulate us from the underclass. My guess is that the people who we might be most afraid of will decide not to carry ID cards with them. They will more likely leave them back home in the Neasden bedsit, along with the jemmies or the smack or the sacks of ricin.

So much for the practicalities: cumbersome, unworkable, irrelevant, costly, bureaucratic and so on. But as I say, that is not the main point. Steve Norris made the main point. If a political party cannot hold true to such a fundamental principle, what is the use of it?