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As Jacqui Smith's death notices are published in all the newspapers, one further Home Office corpse is still, for the moment, twitching.
The other day, Ms Smith travelled north, pushing her life support system and intravenous drip, to announce that the lucky people of Manchester would be the first in Britain offered the chance to pay £30 (or possibly £60) to have their fingerprints taken, their retinas scanned, their personal details entered on a trackable database and be given a plastic ID card that will have no clear value or purpose until at least 2015, if ever.
It doesn't sound like a particularly killer offer, does it? Not one to get Mancunians, even those married to Premiership footballers, rushing for their chequebooks; unlikely to cause quite the same buzz in Alderley Edge as the arrival of the Jimmy Choo delivery van.
This week's announcement also contained what, for me, is always a key indicator of New Labour desperation - the pledge that you'll be able to get your card in shops and supermarkets.
For the past 10 years, promising that sundry public services (voting, social security payments, after-school childcare, hip replacement operations) will somehow be delivered in the Tesco's checkout queue has been the default gimmick of the idea-free spin-doctor.
With senior Cabinet ministers reportedly demanding the ID scheme be dumped, with even David Blunkett (David Blunkett!) now describing the cards as unnecessary, with airline pilots - among the first groups to be forced to have them - promising a boycott, and with the Tories pledged to scrap the cards if, as seems overwhelmingly likely, they win next year, the future of the "plastic poll tax" looks pretty bleak, pretty short-term.
So perhaps it is time to consider what the ID fiasco tells us more broadly about government, and what it should do differently. One key lesson for politicians is that they should stop inventing problems for themselves.
God knows, there are enough real problems out there to fill any government's days many times over. Why, then, do politicians so often create fake problems to add to their burden?
New Labour's most notorious example of a fake problem was, of course, the alleged threat posed by Iraq.
Years of the Government's time and vast quantities of its credibility were consumed on a supposed danger that all the experts agreed was modest. Further political capital was spent in pursuit of the idea that Britain didn't have enough gambling. But no one ever asked for supercasinos. No one even wanted them.
ID cards have been touted as the solution to a number of real problems - terrorism, crime and so on - though none of their supporters can ever explain how having an ID card stops a mugger or suicide bomber.
But they began as the answer to a classic fake problem, still routinely cited by ministers, the need to "secure our identities" against "identity theft".
In fact, our identities are no less secure than they ever were. I'm certainly not saying that impersonation fraud and identity hijacks don't really happen; of course they do. But they have happened since the dawn of money.
What changed was that a combination of government and the security industry - ever-hungry for new sales opportunities - hit on the term "identity theft" as a way of making disparate crimes seem bigger and scarier than they actually are.
The facts about "identity theft" are that it is not rising, nearly all victims get their money back, the official body for plastic card fraud describes it as "quite a small problem", and a 2002 report by the Cabinet Office over-estimated its extent by about 900 per cent.
The idea that ID cards and a database would "secure our identities" was in any case illusory. With all our data stored in one place, vulnerable to thieves and to the Government's record of data loss and computer cock-ups, the cards were far more likely to put our identities at risk.
Why do governments so often tilt at windmills? Over ID cards, it's partly the usual desire for power and control. It's partly politics - Gordon thought it would be popular, and make him look strong.
But in an era of big, stubborn, difficult-to-solve problems (economic and polar meltdown, social immobility) I think ministers also have a genuine yearning for nice, easy problems that they can claim to solve, even if the only way they can get such problems is to make them up.
Unfortunately, though they may have thought Iraq would be a pushover, that the public would love ID cards and that supercasinos were the Pot Noodle of instant inner-city regeneration, little is ever truly simple, certainly not any of those policies.
Ministers long to be seen as active and useful; that must account for the constant announcements and Bills from the likes of Ms Smith. But it doesn't work.
The main story in home affairs should be of relative success: a steady and continuing reduction in crime. But because successive Home Secretaries have behaved as if there is a crime crisis, voters believe it to be so.
One of the Government's more intelligent members, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson, may have realised this.
According to one of his former spin-doctors, Jim Godfrey, Johnson has made a deliberate decision not to talk about the NHS in the belief that the less ministers say, the higher public satisfaction with the service rises.
Godfrey was critical of this but I think it's rather inspired. What's needed in government is a calm focus on core work, not constant attempts to manufacture success.
It's almost certainly too late for this administration but it still has time to divest itself of some of its stupider and costlier quick fixes - like the £5-£10 billion ID scheme.
Gordon Brown's premiership will probably soon be dead. But as any terminal patient will tell you, how you die really matters.
This government still has a chance to die with dignity, doing the right thing on ID cards, proud of itself rather than stubborn and truculent to the last. I hope it takes that chance.
Reader views (12)
"...tactical voting is the only way we can save our country from this nightmare."
I don't think there's going to be much in the way of tactical voting, mate. I think there's going to be a LOT of very peeved and disillusioned former Labour voters correcting their previous mistakes, come the next election.
- Rogan, Irving
Judith C, I think your comments are a little unfair to wooden effigies. Other than that, everything is sound. The government could save face by saying that the scheme is too expensive, but it won't because it's too stubborn and stupid. It's as if they're deliberately trying to destroy the worker's party from within.
- Eddie Zanzibar, England
Any business which installs an ID Booth loses my business
If you care so little for the country I love that you would help it become a fascist/stalinist* state, I don't care to shop with you
*take your pick
- Simon, Newcastle
In 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair stated:
"They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held on the register." see:
Now, paragraph 170 of the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on ID cards -
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/130/13007.htm#a28
states:
“The National Physical Laboratory's feasibility study noted that in one-to-one checks good fingerprint systems were able to achieve a false match rate of 1 in 100,000”.
With a projected 60 Million people on the NIR and with a false match rate of 1 in 100,000, we can expect about 600 false matches every time the NIR is scanned for a fingerprint.
So, if the 900,000 crime scene prints that Mr. Blair mentioned are compared against the NIR, this will result in 600 x 900,000 = 540 million false matches.
Since there are only 60 million people on the register, this means that everyone on the register will (on average) match with the prints found at 9 of those crime scenes.
I think this gives some flavour of the sheer insanity of the scheme.
We still have a chance to stop it - New Labour MUST be completely wiped out at the next election. Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have already pledged to scrap ID Cards - tactical voting is the only way we can save our country from this nightmare.
- Brian Drury, London Colney, England
Faint hope that the brain-dead in the government will abandon ID cards. They are led by moron-in-chief Brown who is so full of venom, class envy, ego and other assorted imperfections that, knowing all is lost, will take the ship down with him the holes below the waterline having been plugged with plastic. The cuckolded wife (in the hubby's imagination) J. Smith, who is already out of her depth, will be nailed to the mast like the wooden effigies she so resembles.
- Judith C, London, England
There are many ways to prove one's identity. The idea that one card should have a monopoly on this function is a bad idea. The right to choose how one wishes to identify oneself should be recognised as a fundamental human right. Long live the memory of Number 6!
- Bloke, London
Interesting piece, and I appreciate the mention, but I want to correct Andrew's remark that I was critical of the 'less is more' strategy - in fact I said exactly the opposite in my original blog on this "...It is a remarkable change of direction for the government and represents a shift towards more grown-up communications...There is something to be said for the ‘less is more’ approach." Full piece is available here:
http://jimgodfrey.typepad.com/jim_godfrey/2009/02/why-less-is-more-when-it-comes-to-the-nhs.html
- Jim Godfrey, London
Its not so much the cards that many people object to, but rather the huge biometric database behind them. Who will have access to OUR information and how can it be ensured that no-one will misuse the info? Knowledge is power and power corrupts. This Government has lost enough of OUR personal info already. Even if you do trust the current government not to misuse info, it does not follow that future governments will not. "Those who would exchange liberty for security deserve neither." (Benjamin Franklin). Trev: Everyone has something to hide - if only their own privacy!
- Mary, London
All it needs is a small error to be made in the compilation of your data and thats it. Try and correct any error made by a Government Dept and you will see. Just ask any pensioner who the authorities decide is dead because a letter sent to a wrong address is returned to them. It can take for ever and you might indeed be dead by the time it is sorted..
Also on the idea it is not compulsory wait till you are told you cannot buy a ticket to travel, open a bank account and use a credit card at Tesco if you do not have an ID then of course it is not compulsory is it? Airport workers are not going to be allowed air-side if they do not take this out, no compulsion oh really?
- Aylyn, Spain
Its easy to complain about I.D cards but I have epilepsy and dont drive and therefore dont have a driving licence and last year when my passport expired I had trouble simply transrring money between accounts as my bank wanted proof of identity. They would NOT accept my old passport!!
Given the fact that millions of people dont have passports or cant or no longer drive then an ID card for say £30 sounds better value than a passport for over £80 which will never be used.
This proposal has been hi-jacked by those who no doubt have BOTH above documents and no proper debate on rational terms about ID cards for basic use has been held.
The system prooposed mat not be right but something still needs to be done.
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
This Government can't be trusted to keep any data secure, or use it for the purposes that they state.
Immigrants are already here with no, or false ID, so giving them a UK ID card will legitimise them, and so add to terrorism concerns.
....and the Government record on I.T. projects is bad !
- Cap, London
There is only one valid reason not to proceed with ID cards and that is IF the cost is too high. There has been much sanctimoniuos cant raised on ID cards by the civil liberties mob about the 'big brother' syndrome which is absolute rubbish. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Simple. I have lived and worked in several countries where ID cards are compulsory and did I feel threatened by the state. OF COURSE NOT. It made me feel safe
ID cards are proof of entitlement to healthcare, education, benefits, and to obtain a bank a/c, driving licence, rent property. Just look at the current health, education and benefits systems which are being swamped by illegal immigrants to the detriment of TRUE British public.
- Trevn, Abu Dhabi
