At least, we will if the eBorders initiative isn’t stopped in its tracks, along with the transformational government initiative, to which these articles refer.

Both initiatives depend on the National Identity Scheme (NIS), the cocktail of ePassports, ID cards and biometric visas which we are promised in the next year or two. At the centre of the NIS lies the National Identity Register (NIR), a database recording the details of everyone in the country aged 16 or over.

We already have dozens of these databases, dotted around the public sector and the private sector. The only thing that is special about the NIR is the proposed use of biometrics. Biometrics are understood by government ministers to provide certainty. They don’t, but these ministers would not listen to anyone who told them that. Until yesterday, when six academics wrote to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Now they must listen. Biometrics was the last defence of the NIS left, after the disgraceful debacle at HMRC last week. Now even that defence is gone. The NIS has nothing left to recommend it.

And with the NIS goes not only eBorders but also transformational government, deprived as they both are now of the certainty that was supposed to be conferred by biometrics. We shall, as ever, have to look elsewhere for our single source of truth.

Not just us, though. At the behest of IDABC, every other country in the EU is busily deploying ID card schemes, based on biometrics, in pursuit of the EC’s eGovernment initiative. The six academics have lit the blue touchpaper. We had all better stand back. Because when this one goes off, the bang is going to be heard all over Europe.

These fireworks have been anticipated. It will be embarrassing for the government to abandon the NIS. We shall be the object of scorn with our EU partners, criticised for undermining the fight against terrorism. That will last for some days. But when people abroad realise that there never was any defence in biometrics, their ire will be turned against their own governments.

Properly handled – we live in hope, some of us – the UK could be seen as the hard-headed realist that looked at the evidence, drew the obvious conclusion and had the courage to act on it.