Nuclear Deterrence doesn’t work and must end

I’ve previously discussed Britain’s nukes-and-NATO approach to security, and the ever-rising cost of maintaining the “Great Power” façade of a long-range, full-spectrum aggressive military capability. This approach is based on a certain mindset – that security and national status derive from a threatening posture and high military spending – and the way we cling to the idiosyncratic concept of nuclear deterrence.

Just as our security does not really depend on massive spending, nor does it really depend on nuclear deterrence. Britain’s nuclear weapons are a national vanity project; as Ernest Bevin put it to Attlee, “I don’t want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to, or at, by a Secretary of State in the United States as I have… We’ve got to have this thing, whatever it costs… and we’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it”. And so it began purely as a prestige project; there was no reference to Russia, or any other threat to which the bomb would be a military answer. It was driven by personal pique and delusions of grandeur. It’s always been a grandiose PR exercise with a blank cheque.

Yet these status-symbols were dressed up and justified (after the fact) through the language and posture of nuclear deterrence. The only serious argument for deterrence is that it seems to have worked so far. But, has it? First, define “work”. Does it mean that war is prevented, or that the country with nukes is never attacked? Hardly – there are dozens of counterexamples. Does it mean that a country which has nukes, always gets its way? Too many counterexamples to that, as well. The coercive diplomacy sometimes called “nuclear blackmail” clearly doesn’t work – many times, nuclear-armed nations have lost wars against non-nuclear ones. So, clearly it’s only a specific kind of war which is supposed to be deterred – an existential one. Argentina, for example, was not deterred from attacking the Falkland islands, because they correctly assumed that the territory at issue was not sufficiently important to justify going nuclear. It would have to be a war in which losing meant conquest and the end of national independence, or to put it more accurately, the replacement of the existing ruling elite and regime, with another one; a war like World War 2, for example. The bogeyman put forward as posing such a threat to Britain was, for most of my life, the USSR. It wasn’t a real threat, and doesn’t exist today. Our nukes did not deter the regional wars, proxy conflicts, or brushfires which seemed to be continuously breaking out somewhere. They didn’t deter the real, major wars in Korea, Vietnam, or the middle East. The war which we were told to fear, the one which only nukes could deter, was an all-out war between the US-led West and the USSR, which would start with an invasion of Western Europe, and which would rapidly go nuclear and escalate until all the missiles and bombs had been used, the entire northern hemisphere was destroyed and the world plunged into nuclear winter. So, the threatened use of nukes on both sides of this putative conflict was justified (by both sides) as being the only way to avoid the use of nukes by both sides. Those who pointed out the illogicality of creating the risk of global destruction in order to avoid that very same global destruction (maybe), were patronised as “useful idiots” who were either unpatriotic, or working for the other side.

But, “deterrence” has to mean more than just “the avoidance of a nuclear war so far”. And, of course, you can’t prove the counterfactual. The usual argument for deterrence is, that it was only the West’s nukes that stopped the USSR invading western Europe. This is, logically, unprovable, and in reality, easily debunked by the historical records, which show that the Soviet leadership never contemplated the conquest of Western Europe.

It is more arguable that we have been spared a nuclear war, not because of nuclear deterrence, but in spite of it.

Deterrence has no Plan B; it works, until eventually it doesn’t, at which point, we all die. There are many possible paths to a war which destroys civilisation; it’s come fairly close a number of times already. Cuba in 1962 is the classic example, followed by well known cases of near-disastrous false alarms, such as one in 1983 when the Soviet radar system malfunctioned. The little known (because discussion of it has been actively suppressed) USS Liberty incident in 1967 saw nuclear-armed aircraft actually take off; something which didn’t happen in the Cuban crisis. Then, of course, the fact that we still have conventional wars, such as the one in Ukraine, but also elsewhere, which could all too easily escalate and go nuclear. The slow but steady drumbeat of proliferation has seen India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea all develop the bomb and deploy it ready for use. These countries may have lower barriers to use than the original five nuclear powers, and are more likely to make the first use; in short, they aren’t reliably deterred. If nukes are the last resort weapon, some of those countries could, relatively quickly, find themselves in a last resort situation. And, look at the kind of people who have the ability to press a nuclear button: Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin; and look how close hawkish advisers like Curtis LeMay have been to the button-pressers. Some of them are mentally unstable, some hold apocalyptic religious views, and all are likely to be succeeded in the coming years by people in a similar mould who we know even less about. Which other countries might decide to join the club in future? Iran? Taiwan? South Korea? All of them are capable of it (technically and financially); all of them have domestic advocates for such a policy. It’s not just a US vs. USSR stand-off any more; there are multiple possible stand-offs, like India/Pakistan, Taiwan/China, Israel/Iran, or North/South Korea. For it to be said to “work”, deterrence has to be 100% perfect, in every possible stand-off, through any possible crisis, forever. Any time it doesn’t work, the likelihood is that within hours of the first bomb being used, they are all used.

A heavily armed, hair-trigger stand-off cannot, therefore, be a long term plan. Eventually, the weapons will be used, whether by escalation from conventional war; by deliberate surprise attack; by accident, false alarm, or malfunction; through unauthorised actions by lower level commanders; through ever more proliferation; through theft or terrorism; even, as foreseen in fiction, through automation of the launch decision by AI. The Mexican stand-off of deterrence is only (arguably) acceptable at all if it leads, inevitably and quickly, along a path to another situation in which the threat of global destruction is lifted. A world, in fact, without nukes. It’s not other countries which are a threat; it’s nuclear weapons themselves, theirs and ours. We can only be sure that nuclear weapons will not be used, ever, if there are none. Either we abolish them, or they will abolish us.

This realisation is, once again, easier for others to see than for us (ie. us British). There are nine nuclear armed nations: 122 others have negotiated a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons, as they can see that the vanity and posturing of the 9 threatens everyone, not just the obvious potential belligerent parties in a nuclear war. The 9 are basically saying, the survival of our nation, its ruling class and its system of government, is more important than the survival of humanity; so if our independence is under existential threat, we’ll use the weapons which will destroy the world. In this way, we are all held hostage to, for example, the survival in power of Kim Jong Un or the Chinese Communist party. The immorality and illogic of this posture is, perhaps, only obvious to those who are the hostages in this scenario; those whose countries would not be party to such a war, but would be destroyed by it anyway. In the end, perhaps it will be down to them to get it into our stubborn heads.

Say this out loud, though, and you cast yourself as the apostate, the unbeliever in a world of people who learned in childhood to talk in the language of deterrence and not to question the argument that it works. I know this well, as I was brought up to not-think that way myself. Indeed, acceptance of it is almost the only qualification needed to become Prime Minister; the first task a newly appointed PM is given to carry out, is to write instructions to the captains of the Trident submarines as to what revenge they should wreak if London goes offline due to being nuked. Even those of us who aren’t Prime Ministers will occasionally be confronted with similar fantasy scenarios designed to catch us out or expose our naïve pacifism. Suppose Germany had developed the bomb in 1940, they say? Summoning, as usual, the ghost of Hitler so common in British conversation. Or, they ask some other question designed to parachute you into the dream world of counterfactual situations. One might ask, in return, would it have been a good thing if the Saxons had nukes in 1066, and had used them to see off the Normans, in the process laying waste to England and France? At what other time in our history, or that of any other country, would it have been a good thing for any side, in any conflict, to have been able to blow up half the world? And, if you can think of no such example, why is it different now?

Then they conjure up future fantasy situations: suppose we all disarm, but (Iran/North Korea/some tinpot dictatorship) secretly re-creates it and springs a surprise on us? Wouldn’t we all be held to ransom? Well, come to mention it, no we wouldn’t. An agreed nuclear disarmament regime would include a perfectly viable enforcement mechanism. In fact, one already exists: under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), non-nuclear signatory nations are inspected to ensure they aren’t developing a bomb in secret. A nuclear weapons programme is a big thing; you need exotic stuff (uranium, plutonium, other artificial elements, enrichment facilities, factories, test sites, delivery systems, missiles, planes, rockets, re-entry vehicles, you name it). Stuff that’s hard to conceal from satellites. So, the chances of such a surprise development are very much smaller than the chances of an irrational, fanatical autocrat taking control of an existing nuclear-armed nation. Someone like, say, Trump, or Netanyahu, or a LePen/Farage/Orban figure in Britain or France.

If someone argues that it’s all too late, the cat’s out of the bag, you can’t un-invent the bomb, the design is common knowledge now, and anyone can download it; well, one has to point out that it has worked for chemical weapons, which are, by comparison, very easy to make. Also that they are going against the position of the 191 states which have signed the NPT, one term of which is that the nuclear-armed states agree to pursue good-faith negotiations aimed at the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. Only five nations are not party to this treaty (Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and South Sudan). So the diplomatic world is happily signed up to the principle, even if they ignore their obligations in practice. The point is, the treaty leading to nuclear disarmament already exists and we have already signed it; the pity is, we didn’t really mean it. The job facing the world now is to apply enough pressure to the original five to live up to their obligations, and to deal with the rogue states who haven’t signed up. On the outcome of this task, all our lives depend.

Consequences of the peace – if it lasts

Israel and Hamas have, at last, reached a limited kind of agreement. A cynic might look at the average useful life of Israel’s ceasefires and peace deals, and give it about a week. But, there is some chance that this one might stick. It’s vague, and it will take a lot to straighten out the details, but there’s a chance. If there is a peace that lasts a while, what will happen?

Firstly, the agreement concerns only Gaza, not the other occupied Palestinian territories. As long as Israel continues its various occupations, which can only be maintained by force, there will be no genuine peace. This is the fundamental fact which dominates the politics of the region. It’s not only the Occupied Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, but also chunks of Lebanon and Syria.

Secondly, Israel doesn’t keep its word. They agreed to pull out of Lebanon, but have continued killing people there and have annexed five areas of Lebanese territory. The American “guarantor” of that agreement simply allows them to get away with it. The old wisecrack is that an Israeli ceasefire means “you cease, we fire”. There is, so far, no reason to expect that this time is different.

Thirdly, Hamas releasing the remaining Israeli hostages is a positive thing. Holding hostages hasn’t done them any good for the last two years, and Israel now holds something like 10,000 Palestinians who are also hostages in all but name. If a hostage exchange goes ahead, and aid is allowed in, that will be a big step forward.

Hundreds of journalists have been killed in the last two years, to keep them from reporting on what Israel was doing. This will be hard to prevent once there’s a ceasefire in effect. And there’s a lot we haven’t been told over the last 2 years; not just about the fate of ordinary people, and about the many atrocities, but progress of the conflict itself. Normally, the technical details of wars are reported in fascinated detail; think how much we’ve heard about drones in Ukraine, how many maps showing front lines have been printed. How often did the Ukrainians tell us they needed this tank, that aircraft, this kind of missile, to beat the Russians. By contrast, we’ve heard nothing about how the Hamas vs. IDF combat was conducted. There are many, many stories that have gone untold, and it will not be possible to suppress them forever.

I expect there will be a re-evaluation of the events of 7th October 2023. Until now, Israel has succeeded in portraying this as a massive terrorist outrage; a mindless, bloodthirsty rampage in which innocent civilians were wantonly murdered, babies beheaded and women raped, as opposed to a carefully executed prison-break and largely successful attack on legitimate military targets with relatively few collateral civilian casualties. Any discussion in the Western media tends to require all commentators to start by buying into the “mindless terrorist rampage” narrative as a pre-qualification. This may start to change.

I’ve mentioned before the lies which were spread about baby-killing and mass rape. We are also accustomed to the continual repetition of “1200 Israelis killed that day”, without any mention of the fact that nearly a third of them were military and police members (legitimate targets), and that many of the rest were killed by their own forces. If any Hamas members are ever put on trial over 7^th October, they are bound to make a case that the action was a legitimate one: occupied people are entitled, under international law, to resist their occupiers and take back their land by force. In short, that what they did was a military operation against legitimate targets, with a far, far lower proportion of innocent, collateral-damage victims than any Israeli military campaign. There are also persistent open questions about what the Israelis knew in advance, what orders were given that day, and how many Israeli casualties were knowingly inflicted by the IDF; and once there is a breathing space, those questions will be asked increasingly loudly.

We should, also, start to hear some further details of the support given to Israel by the West, especially the UK. Some of this may be kept secret, but the use of the base at Akrotiri has been very extensive, and the RAF have mounted a huge number of surveillance flights. A lot of money has been spent in the process. A very large number of service personnel have been involved, so even if they are all ordered to keep quiet about it, some leakage is inevitable. In the US, there are those who will seek to dig out the facts about just how many billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money were spent to support the genocide. In addition, it may be possible to winkle out some internal documents and legal advice relating to the Government’s efforts to justify continuing to supply Israel by denying that the war was genocidal.

Donald Trump is keen to claim that this is his agreement; that he deserves a Nobel Prize; and that it represents an epochal turning point. He’s a fool and a braggart, but I’m fine with giving him a gong if it does some good. Sadly, he has spent all of this year supporting the genocide with war materiel and diplomatic cover; to claim the credit for peace when he decides to stop is very cynical. This week’s agreement is virtually identical to a proposal Hamas were willing to agree to, over a year ago; but Biden and Netanyahu decided to continue the slaughter. Needless to say, at that time, they both maintained the lie that only Hamas stood in the way of a ceasefire, when it was Israel which refused. This is the kind of false narrative which gradually erodes over time.

News is often called the first draft of history; we should look forward to much better informed and more considered second and third drafts as the volume of propaganda falls off and the truth has a chance to emerge. Once actual historians have the chance to get to work, they have the habit of looking for evidence. The targeting of journalists has been relentless, but after the shooting stops, they will have the chance to gather first-hand accounts from all kinds of participants, both combatants (on both sides) and civilians.

The way the world views the destruction of Gaza will change. Just as the popular view of the 1914 – 1918 war changed from “the Great War for Civilisation” (as it was described on the Victory medal) to “the pointless slaughter of the trenches”, I think the picture in the rear-view mirror will be very different to the one we see today. The constant propaganda of an innocent Israel acting in reasonable self-defence will be vulnerable on examination; the future will look back on this period as an extension of the original Nakba.

The proposed peace agreement doesn’t make clear who will finance or carry out the reconstruction. And the cost will be vast. In a just world, Israel would pay reparations for the extraordinary damage they have done, but don’t hold your breath for that. The Palestinians are dirt poor, but there is an undeveloped gas field off the shore of Gaza. If this is appropriated to pay for what Israel has done, it would be a travesty, but in keeping with the history of the pillage of Palestinian assets.

The widely quoted casualty figures are a huge underestimate, being based only on the actual bodies counted by the Gaza authorities. Those buried in the rubble are not included, nor those who have died of starvation or disease. At some point after a ceasefire, though, it will be possible to estimate the remaining population of the Strip and compare it to the 2.2m who lived there before. I would be surprised if the population has not been reduced by several hundred thousand; maybe as many as half a million. The Israelis will find it harder to go on denying that killing something like a quarter of a population is genocidal.

Israel’s actions over the last 2 years have changed their standing and reputation in the rest of the world. Not with the Western money and power elite; they have been solid in their support. But, among ordinary people and the young especially, awareness of the background of the conflict, and disgust at the flagrant genocide, have risen strongly, despite relentless propaganda. In the long term, wider knowledge of Israel’s behaviour down the decades may cement this change.

The viability of Israel’s economy is an interesting long-term point. Israel is a small nation of around 10m (2.1m of them Arab). It has a successful economy, with high-flying technology and finance sectors doing much of the heavy lifting, however these sectors are dependent on a small number of leading individuals, and these kind of individuals are often secular, liberal-minded people, many of whom are seeking more stable, peaceful, less autocratic locations in which to apply themselves. If the brain drain continues, it is a threat to Israel’s ability to support its outsize military sector and the 1.3m unproductive religious fundamentalist/conservative ultra-orthodox, whose children study only the Torah and are neither qualified to work in professional jobs, nor willing to serve in the army.

Here in Britain, we have to see what will be the long term effect of what has been revealed by the choices our government made over the last 2 years. Both the tail-end Tory government and the Starmer government have supported Israel in practical ways and through providing diplomatic cover; the suppression of dissent (focused on the banning of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act) has involved the arrest of over 2000 people, mostly for peacefully holding a sign. Bringing those cases to trial is likely to cost a great deal of political capital, for no gain, even if they are batch-processed and denied either a jury or adequate time to mount a defence. The proscription was an idiotic policy which has given a massive boost to PA and its fellow travellers. Just as internment and the Bloody Sunday massacre led to a huge wave of IRA recruitment, punishing thousands of protesters would be totally counterproductive. Nobody in their right mind sets out to create martyrs like that. The best course for the government would be to use the end of the conflict (if it sticks) as cover to lift the ban and drop the charges. A convenient time to do this would be at the coming judicial review next month. But, they seem determined to stay wrong.

Finally, there’s something important I should add. Just because one side in a conflict is profoundly in the wrong, that doesn’t mean their opponents are in the right. Regular readers will know that I’m broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. I’ve mentioned that, as the occupied people, the Palestinians have the right in law to resist, even to try to take back their land by force. In saying this, I’m saying no more than the UN general assembly has said many times in a long series of resolutions. However, I hope nobody has presumed that this means I’m a supporter of Hamas. The spectacle, on Monday, of a mass public execution in Gaza city, of about half a dozen men belonging to another armed group, shows the kind of organisation Hamas is. They have run the Gaza strip like Al Capone ran Chicago in the 1920s; through ruthless brutality against their own people.

It is part of the Palestinian tragedy that they have been so badly led. The Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank, is widely seen as collaborationist, and used by Israel to maintain its control; while Hamas was also built up by Israel as a counterweight to the Authority on the divide-and-rule principle. If there is ever to be a viable Palestinian state, it will need a new generation of leadership with a new approach.

Aggressive flagging and digital ID

There is a direct line from Thatcher and Tebbit to Trump, Farage and Yaxley-Lennon. Norman Tebbit’s notorious cricket test – a falsely imposed loyalty test designed to “other” immigrants who might want to continue supporting the sports teams of the country they grew up in – is the direct, linear ancestor of false loyalty tests imposed by the current right-wing fad for aggressive flag-flying, which poses as patriotism but is a symbol of immigrant-hate. The sight of whole streets in which every lamp-post has a flag attached brings to mind – and it’s so obvious, it can only be deliberate – the way Germany was decorated with Nazi flags during the third Reich. This has nothing in common with the occasional display of bunting when there is a royal wedding or jubilee, or when an England team is doing unusually well in a World Cup. Those displays are celebratory, inclusive, and are not excessive or blanketing. The current fad for aggressive flagging is entirely exclusionary; in terms of marking territory, it’s no different to the way dogs use lamp-posts. In attempting to take ownership of both the national flag and the public space, it emphasises division and exclusion and is aggressive to those who might not see the world in the same ethno-nationalist terms as National Conservatives (see my post of May 12^th 2023). While the Nat C’s haven’t taken off as an organisation, their manifesto is practically identical to those of Reform and its fellow travellers.

Flags originated in the war-banners of ancient times, when they served the purpose of marking front lines and rallying points on battlefields. There is no other reason why cloth rectangles with garish colours should symbolise modern nation-states. If the concept of the nation-state were to be invented tomorrow, minus all the historical baggage, there’s no reason to think that flags would be re-invented as their symbols. The sight of, for example, a country’s Olympic team marching behind their flag, is self-consciously reminiscent of an army (and, of course, armies continue to march behind flags when on parades). There is always that hint of a warlike connection associated with flag display; there is never a celebration of patriotic support for one’s own country without the implication of contrast, and potentially conflict, with others. Flag display is necessarily about “us”, with at least a hint of “vs. them”. Even in the most innocent kind of display, for example marking pleasure at a royal birth or wedding, there is a group identity being defined and promoted, and those who don’t fully identify with it are being othered. The far right have seized on this by spreading a definition of “us” and “them” which suits their agenda. Immigrants and refugees need no further help to work out which side of the line they stand. Second and third generation descendants of immigrants can also figure it out easily enough. Farage’s highly mischievous suggestion of revoking indefinite leave to remain, and his bragging about how many deportations he would carry out per year, reminds me of the 1970s National Front and their crude “send them back” rhetoric and “repatriation” policies. How long will it be before the proposed list of those to be expelled extends to include those born here? It is already happening in Trump’s America. Edge cases have already been found to test the principle of withdrawing citizenship where it would previously have been considered inalienable. Shamima Begum, born in the UK, has been stripped of her citizenship and now lives, stateless, in a refugee camp. As she left Britain to marry an ISIS fighter, she’s not a figure of public sympathy, which obviously makes her an ideal test case for the new power of revoking birthright citizenship. Following, as it does, the mass theft of our EU citizenship and many other rights, by a gang of cheats and liars, we are left in no doubt that the very concept of citizenship has been fundamentally redefined, to our disadvantage, into something which is not an inherent attribute, but a gift from our lords and masters which they may capriciously withdraw if we displease them. In the US, people with legal resident status (short of citizenship) have been expelled for dissenting views; whatever happens over there, comes over here a few years later, so don’t be surprised.

In this way, and many others, Britain is descending into a darker place. As in so many areas, we are following the US which has already trodden the path. In both countries, the old school of centrist politics has been gutted. It’s too late now to expect former Tory moderates to reassert themselves; the likes of Philip Hammond, David Gauke, Rory Stewart, David Lidington, Oliver Letwin, Michael Heseltine, Anna Soubry, Chuka Umunna and others like them, are all now outside active politics. The right-wing takeover of the Tory party succeeded up to the point of the short-lived Truss government; the collapse that followed left Farage’s Reform in the ascendant, with a steady stream of right-wing Tories defecting to Farage, and those that remain (if I can use that word) following almost the same policy platform, but with a leader who has no charisma and is failing to lead.

It is not encouraging to look at where the US is at the moment. Polarisation is becoming extreme and political violence is advocated by an increasing number. While Trump actively undermines national institutions and exploits events such as the shooting of Charlie Kirk, to encourage division, there are many in the US who actually call for a “conservatives vs. liberals” civil war. In a country with more guns than people, the dangers of this are all too obvious.

Starmer’s reaction has been, once more, to reach for an old favourite of the right, and call for the introduction of ID cards, this time being digital. We are told that these would prove a person’s entitlement to work and close down the employment black market which, it is claimed, attracts the small-boat migrants. No real detail has yet been revealed, but we can do our own thinking. At present, employers are already obliged to check the status of those they hire (using passports or similar documentation) and no attempt has been made to explain how putting this function on a phone would make it any more effective. Inevitably, just to prove employment eligibility, such a thing will require a database containing everyone’s basic identity information such as name and name history; birth, marriage and death history and certification; address and address history; NI number and employment history; any criminal record, arrests or cautions; nationality, citizenship and visa status and travel history; electoral register status; marital status and similar details for spouses or partners; biometric data including photos, fingerprints and facial recognition; driving licence details and history; car ownership and registration history; and security clearance if there is one. This is simply a list of the information and documents I had to provide to take up my own current job (which required BPSS, the lowest level of security clearance). This trove of information alone would make the database a juicy target for hackers; steal this much personal data, or clone someone’s digital ID, and it’s open season for all kinds of frauds. But, inevitably, there would be a mission-creep process by which all the information held by the state (tax and financial records; medical records; education history; records of your internet use; organisational, party, religious and union affiliations and memberships; your ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation; any public activities such as campaigning, or standing for election; banking and transaction records, credit history, credit rating, and insurance policies; your social media accounts, content, history, and followers; even your DNA) would eventually be either integrated or linked to such a database. For those who come to the attention of the security services, no doubt there will be links to those records. It will be the ultimate dream for any agency such as America’s NSA, which probably comes the closest to having such a database today.

The bloated database would make the decadal census redundant; it would already contain far more information about each one of us than we can remember or write down ourselves, and constantly updated. Indeed, such a database/ID app would make separate, single-function documents such as passports and driving licences redundant as well. It would quickly become the omni-document; no others needed. Proof of age at a bar? Digital ID. Want to see some porn? Digital ID (just for child protection, of course! But now we know your sexual preferences too). Out and about during a pandemic? Prove you are a vaccinated critical worker with your Digital ID. It would be a short step from there to a social credit scoring system like the one in China.

This raises two big concerns. The first is the God-like level of knowledge about every detail of everyone’s life; it would be the most powerful tool of surveillance and social control in all of history, and this power should never be given to anyone, whether you believe them to be a good government or a bad one. It’s bad enough for an authoritarian like Starmer to have this kind of power; imagine a Prime Minister Farage or Johnson with access to such tools. The second concern is that the government has a terrible history of total failure to protect large databases from malicious intruders, and I see no reason to believe that this will suddenly change. Regular compromises of tax records, banking information, NHS records, the Police national computer, and other large databases, make it clear that no system of this kind can be made secure. Even if the system ran perfectly, there would be hundreds of people with the ability to read all this information about you; it would be the end of privacy. It is only a slightly lesser concern that data quality is often poor in large databases, and error correction is always difficult, often impossible, if only because the last person allowed to see a database record is usually the person the data is about.

Intrusions of our privacy and extensions of state surveillance powers are always brought in as a supposed response to some threat – terrorists, immigrants, illegal workers, the Russians, infectious diseases, whatever – yet, since these threats are largely illusory and overblown, no such threat is ever defeated, so none of the powers are ever given up again. They always end up being used to suppress dissent. So it will be with digital ID, should it ever be implemented. I doubt that it will – this time round – as many Labour MPs are opposed, and all the other parties. However, I fear that, eventually, such a system will be constructed. Probably by Fujitsu, Palantir, or some other such company which will then have us all by the short hairs. They will charge billions to build and run it, proving once again that slaves end up paying the costs of their own enslavement.

Free people need no Kings, ID cards, or Big Brothers.