John Morrison writes on the Guardian’s Comment is Free web site:

Is the government backtracking on its plan to make each and every one of us have an identity card? That’s one possible interpretation of Gordon Brown’s statement in his weekend Observer interview that “under our proposals there is no compulsion for existing British citizens”. On the face of it, this is a big retreat from the current policy set out by the Home Office in a strategic action plan just over a year ago. Although the current law, passed in 2006, doesn’t make it compulsory to register for an ID card, the government has always made it plain that this is only a matter of time. According to the strategic action plan, “It is the government’s policy that registration in the NIS should eventually be compulsory for all those resident in the UK who are over the age of 16″.

As a former Kremlinologist used to studying the fine print, it seems to me there are three ways to read this Delphic statement. First, Brown simply misspoke and muddled up the existing law with the government’s proposals for the next stage of the scheme. Second, he was deliberately trying to pull the wool over the eyes of liberal-minded Observer readers who’ve been reading Henry Porter’s columns. The third intriguing possibility is that some genuine rethinking is going on over the scale and timing of the ID scheme.

This entry was posted by andrew on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 17:35 and is filed under General, Neutral, UK News Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.