ID Mess

‘AT least with the introduction of ID cards, many of us will get to discover the identity of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

‘Identifying features: Something of the night’

But only his identity – as new Home Secretary Charles Clarke says, the police who stop that man in glasses will not be able to look at his papers and see his medical records, religious or political beliefs.

While Clarke outlines his plans for ID cards to Parliament today, he might also like to consider the Times’s reported comment from a spokesman for the civil rights group Liberty.

In response to Clarke’s assertion that any critic of the scheme is guilty of ‘liberal woolly thinking’, the group asks: ‘If opponents of identity cards are woolly liberals, what does that make George Bush?’

Don’t panic, this is no MI5-style question designed to separate the religious nuts from the pretzels – just a prelude to news that Dubya has ruled out ID cards in the US because they have no effect in combating terrorism.

No-one aside from Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein could accuse Bush of possessing the political convictions of a sheep.

And neither could the same accusation be made of iron-hewn Margaret Thatcher, who calls ID cards a ‘Germanic concept completely alien to this county’ – much like the Windsors, Christmas trees and Protestantism.

The Liberal Democrat leader Charles ‘Hank’ Kennedy, however, who asks Clarke to ‘pause for thought’ and see what happens, could be a man in a sheep’s jumper.

But while the Lib-Dems’ policy is to wait and see, and up to 30 Labour backbenchers prepare to rebel, an unidentified Tory leader tries to head off a ‘revolt’ in his party.

The Telegraph reports that a man possessing something of the night says it is ‘impossible to dismiss Government’s identity card plans out of hand’.

Who this man is we don’t know. And the irony is that until we get those ID cards, we might never find out…’

Posted: 20th, December 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink