According to the Daily Telegraph’s commentary:

The Labour Government is behaving like a hot-air balloonist who is heading unerringly for the treetops and disaster. Ballast is being jettisoned in a desperate quest for greater height. Over the side this week went plans to part-privatise Royal Mail – dumped, said Lord Mandelson, because the market conditions were not propitious, though the real reason was that Labour backbenchers were in open revolt against the plan and could not be ignored by a weak Prime Minister. Dumped, too, were compulsory identity cards – that, at least, was the impression given to the public by Alan Johnson, the new Home Secretary; in reality, the national identity register will continue to be developed until such time as a future government scraps it. Labour’s balloon, though, continues to fall. Some in the party still think they are weighed down most by Gordon Brown and warn that the option of dropping him over the side has yet to be closed off. Autumn will be a dangerous season for the Prime Minister.

John Lettice writes in the Register, analysing the future of the ID cards scheme. He concludes:

We’re therefore left with several possible outcomes. ID cards themselves go away under a Tory Government, and there’s a reasonable probability that the database and IPS (which currently still has the mission of transforming itself into the national identity bank/broker) will be brought under control. There will also be at least an intention to defang databases in general, and to take the state’s nose out of everybody’s business. But that’s a toughie - there’s a lot of dodgy databases out there, and quite a lot of Tory councils are mustard-keen on surveillance.

Under Labour (just pretend…), the database will rot if we’re lucky, but the “assumption that the state sits at the centre of our lives” (as Jerry Fishenden puts it) will remain, meaning that the Government will continue to collect data from us and store and distribute it via unfit for purpose systems.

ID cards will plod on at least for a bit, and could even achieve a certain level of popularity and utility if, as we say, the Home Office worked on the pricing, presentation and marketing. But actually they’d turn into a radically different beast from the one originally specified. Some readers may start to appear at borders (automation is the IPS fix for congestion there), but there won’t be readers in the High Streets and elsewhere; checks will be visual, and forgeries will be easier because nobody is ever going to check the chip in the card.

Toby Stevens writes on his excellent blog at Computer Weekly:

I’d like to offer my congratulations to the Communications team at the Identity and Passport Service for successfully pulling off one of the most audacious and downright clever pieces of media manipulation I’ve ever witnessed. If I ever find myself in charge of a large and unpopular public service project, I’m headhunting the lot of you into my team. Here’s why.

Yesterday afternoon I was tied up running a small conference when I received an email from a friend telling me that the Home Secretary had scrapped compulsory ID cards. My first reaction was to take that at face value - that the scheme had been binned as a result of the Home Secretary’s policy review. Clearly that was the reaction of the media as well - the BBC, the broadsheets and tabloids, even the Metro are running the story that the government has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn*on the National Identity Service, with ‘£1bn wasted’ according to the Metro. The media appear triumphant that the CWIC airside worker trial in Manchester has been switched from compulsory to voluntary, and there will be no compulsion to have an ID Card.

But we’re so very wrong, and that’s the genius of IPS’ communications team.

The new Home Secretary writes on the Guardian Comment is Free web site:

The introduction of identity cards is a simple means of helping you, and I, protect our unique identity from fraudsters. Identity fraud costs the UK economy £1.2bn on average each year and causes misery for tens of thousands who fall victim. At a cost of just £30, the identity card is a cheap way of helping fight back. So, despite the headlines that would have readers think otherwise, I’m not scrapping identity cards – I’m committed to delivering them more quickly to the people who will benefit most.

I know that some of you have real concerns about the government’s motives for introducing the card. When I announced this week that I would make identity cards wholly voluntary it was because I believe that there are real benefits that will make the card an attractive proposition for many people. I think the case for identity cards has been made, but understand that getting a card will be a big decision for some people. Easy or hard, I think it should be a voluntary decision, one that people choose to take, because they agree and welcome the benefits an identity card will provide.

According to the Guardian’s editorial:

Less a climbdown, more of a stumble. A glance at some of the papers yesterday might have led you to believe that something truly momentous had happened: Alan Johnson, the shiny new home secretary and sometime last-resort leadership hope of desperate Labour MPs, had finally rid the government of its self-imposed policy millstone and binned the ID card scheme.

If only. What Mr Johnson did instead was something much more modest, but which nevertheless erodes yet further the government’s case for the identity database. In the face of tremendous trade-union opposition, this former full-time union official called off plans to trial the compulsory ID card among workers at two airports. It is as little and as significant as that. Little, because only 30,000 airport staff were affected by the announcement. Significant, because one of the ragbag of reasons for the introduction of the wretched ID register was that it would enhance airport security. This is not just a pilot scheme that has been scrapped; yet another big hole has been knocked in the justification for the entire project. What was originally dreamed up as a compulsory item to help combat terrorism and benefit fraud is now being sold as an entirely voluntary accessory to be toted by thirsty teens who want to prove to barmen that they can legally buy a pint.