The UK government confirmed it is scrapping the mandatory requirement for digital ID cards by 2029 – those opposing digital IDs celebrated. However, the devil is in the details.
The government has only scrapped the “BritCard” scheme; it is still proceeding with plans to require some form of digital identification.
“By using the BritCard deception to misrepresent digital identity, the government provided the people with a loathed bogeyman they could easily defeat. The evident ploy was supposed to lull the people into accepting their digital identities by convincing them they had successfully rejected the fake BritCard version of digital ID,” Iain Davis writes.
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Fake Digital ID “Victory”
By Iain Davis, 15 January 2026
UK social media was alight a couple of days ago (at the time of writing) with various individuals and groups congratulating each other, and even taking credit, for forcing the Labour government into an ignominious “climb-down” or embarrassing “U-turn” on digital ID.
A tiny gaggle of politicians patted themselves on the back for defeating the government, claiming “mandatory digital ID is dead.” Popular talking heads were thanking their “fellow activists” for showing the government what “people power really means” and various “independent media” figures were effusing about the successful “push-back against digital ID.”
The message came through loud and clear. If we act in unison, the government has to listen and respond. The representative democratic system works. TRUST THE SYSTEM!
Unfortunately, the celebration was a bit premature because the great movement of the people, the millions of petition signatures, the protests and the stiff letters to Members of Parliament (“MP’s”) have made no difference whatsoever to the government’s push to enforce digital ID – digital identity – on all of us.
Speaking the day after propagandists ran countless articles and reports claiming “mandatory digital ID” had been shelved, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament: “There will be checks. They will be digital and they will be mandatory.”
The mythical BritCard has been abandoned but, as I pointed out more or less as soon as it was launched, the Government’s proposed mandatory digital ID – BritCard – was never a real thing. It was purely a propaganda construct and had nothing to do with the actual problem we face, which is the interoperable digital identity system.
(Please watch the video below, which was filmed shortly before the stories about defeating BritCard were published. I discuss the true nature of digital identity with Ant Critchley from Becoming Stellify.)
You can also watch the video above on Odysee HERE. You can watch the whole discussion HERE. Ant Critchley’s Becoming Stellify. Support Ant Critchley’s work.
By using the BritCard deception to misrepresent digital identity, the government provided the people with a loathed bogeyman they could easily defeat. The evident ploy was supposed to lull the people into accepting their digital identities by convincing them they had successfully rejected the fake BritCard version of digital ID. Hence, all the misplaced celebration which arose solely in response to completely meaningless propaganda stories.
It is hard to say to what extent this propaganda strategy has worked. Who knows how many people imagine they won’t be subject to digital identity as a result? Clearly, a proportion of the population has not fallen for it but that didn’t stop some politicians from trying to capitalise on the propaganda that served their interests.
On 27 September 2025, with regard to BritCard, I wrote:
The most likely outcome is that as anger is stoked and resentment swells, the completely unnecessary BritCard will be flung out along with the Labour government: again.”
The door will then be open for the political saviours, be they the Tories, Reform or whomever, to come to power promising never to subject us to any more of these idiotic government-issued ID schemes.
However, to keep pace with the digital revolution, our digital infrastructure, our cards and licenses, will need to be upgraded to facilitate the necessary interoperability.
Voila! We will rejoice in our “victory” and accept digital ID without even knowing it.
Lo and behold, perhaps the most ridiculous claim of “victory” came from Nigel Farage, who, representing Reform UK, said: “Keir Starmer has abandoned plans for the Digital ID to be compulsory. This is a victory for individual liberty against a ghastly, authoritarian government. Reform UK would scrap it altogether.”
This was a monumentally facile public relations win for Reform UK, or at least an attempt to gain that advantage. In truth, digital identity is a worldwide project backed by the entire global public-private partnership. Even if they were willing, which none are, no government – better described as functional oligarchies – can defeat the digital identity agenda.
Imposing digital identity on every human being on earth is United Nations SDG 16.9 for crying out loud. Do you really think that Reform UK can or will even try to overturn that?
[Related: SDG16: Part 1 – Building the Global Police State or an abridged version of the article HERE]
We, on the other hand, can defeat real digital identity in the UK if we are serious about mass non-compliance.
(Please watch the video below. Ant Chritchley and I consider possible solutions. We discuss how ‘The Politics of Obedience’ has brought us to this point and how, if we accept it, digital identity will create state control mechanisms that will move the state beyond the need for propaganda, political authority or even law – the Agentic State.)
You can also watch the video above on Odysee HERE.
Regardless of the stories the government and its partners want us to believe about digital ID, if we wish to retain what little freedom we have left, we have no choice but to defend ourselves against the impending tyranny of digital identity.
In the UK, we have a written codified constitution – Magna Carta – which the Government refuses to acknowledge. We also have a legal copy – the Bill of Rights and other legal documents – masquerading as an uncodified constitution. Nonetheless, in the written codified constitution and in its cobbled-together legal simulacrum, there is an indubitable constitutional truth recognised and common to both: we are all equal before the law.
That we are all equal before the law is supposed to be the founding principle of our so-called “representative democracy.” Therefore, while we are peaceful and cause neither harm nor loss to any other person, all of us in the UK have the constitutional right to act freely, absent of any interference, molestation or punishment meted out by the government and its enforcers. Of course, we all know this is not what happens in reality.
The government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary – consistently ignores this founding constitutional principle of our allegedly democratic society. Instead, the government either pretends we have no constitutional right or freedoms or exclusively applies them only to itself, using what we might call the Octavian Principle:
The Octavian Principle – the enduring institutional doctrine that constitutions, rules and safeguards are only invoked, respected or defended when the personal interests, reputation or security of those in power are at risk of exposure or disrepute.
The Government asserts that it can “create or end any law.” That is to say, the Government demands that we accept that it is more equal before the law than the rest of us. The Octavian Principle is exemplified by the Government’s unconstitutional and, therefore, apparently unlawful claim that “Parliamentary sovereignty is the most important part of the UK constitution.”
So, which is it? Are we all equal before the law, or is Parliament sovereign? We have the right to an answer because the suggested mutually exclusive contradiction cannot possibly exist in reality.
Private corporations are free to implement digital identity systems if they wish. Equally, we have the right not to use them.
If the corporate imposition of digital identity leaves those of us who do not consent unable to buy essential commodities – water, food, shelter, transport, energy, fuel, etc. – then the government must step aside while we build the parallel system we will need to survive. If it legislates or regulates to stop us building and operating that vital parallel system, then corporate diktat rules above the law, and we are clearly not all equal before the law.
If the Government maintains that we are all equal before the law, it cannot force us to use digital identity systems to which we do not consent. Government cannot lawfully deny us access to public sector services we pay for by compelling us to use digital identity gateways like One Login. If it does, and does not provide an alternative non-digital route, we are not all equal before the law.
If we are all equal before the law, the government must either provide means and ways for us to access essential public services, without using any form of digital identity, or must agree that we are exempt from paying – taxation – for services we cannot access.
If it doesn’t, and we are forced by some supposed “legal” mechanism to use either private or public digital identity systems without our consent, no matter what the government proclaims, we most assuredly are not all equal under the law.
If so, the whole edifice of purportedly democraticgovernment is demonstrably nothing but a facade thinly veiling a public-private state dictatorship, and we can all proceed on that clearly understood basis.
About the Author
Iain Davis is an autodidact, a journalist, an author and a researcher. He is the creator of the blog IainDavis.com, formerly known as ‘In This Together’. He publishes articles on his Substack page, Unlimited Hangout, Geopolitics & Empire, Bitcoin Magazine and other outlets.
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