Will a Keir Starmer Government Make Digital Identity a Reality in the UK?

Big tech and fintech companies would certainly like to think so, as too does the City of London Corporation and Starmer’s mentor, Tony Blair. 

As of today, July 5, 2024, the United Kingdom has a new government. As expected, the Labour Party trounced its main rival, the Conservative Party, and will be able to govern the country with what some are calling a “super majority.” Labour managed to win 412 out of 650 parliamentary seats, almost doubling its tally (210) from the 2019 elections. According to Foreign Policy magazine, the party’s leader and new prime minister-elect, Keir Starmer, is likely to become “the social democratic leader with the largest parliamentary majority anywhere on Earth.”

Granted, this is according to Foreign Policy‘s definition of what a “social democratic” leader consists of. As NC commenter Furnace points out below, “Starmer is as far from a true social-democrat as it gets.” It is also arguable whether his majority is bigger than that of Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s left-leaning president elect whose coalition government will control roughly two-thirds of both legislative houses. While Sheinbaum’s party, MORENA, garnered almost 60% of the entire vote share, Starmer’s Labour Party commanded just 33.8%. Thanks to the wonders of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, that translated into almost two-thirds of the seats in parliament.

Of course, Starmer’s “landslide” victory was not owing to a groundswell of support for his vision or policy proposals — before the elections the UK public viewed the Labour Party under Starmer even less favourably than under Ed Miliband — but because support for the Conservative Party has all but disintegrated. Put simply, this election was a referendum on 14 years of depraved, divisive and destructive Tory governance, and the results speak for themselves. As The Economist notes, the Conservatives’ expected tally of 122 seats, down from 365 in the last elections, “is worse than any in modern history.”

In the days leading up to the election, the British polling company YouGov asked Labour voters to explain in their own words the main reason why they are backing the party. For the largest number (48%) the key motivation was ousting the Conservatives, which is perfectly understandable given: a) how long the Conservatives have governed for; and b) how badly they have governed during that time. Only 5% of the respondents to the YouGov survey said they were voting Labour because they agree with the party’s proposed policies.

We asked Labour voters to tell us in their own words the main reason they are backing the party. For the largest number by far the key motivation is ousting the Conservatives

Top 5 reasons
Get the Tories out: 48%
Country needs a change: 13%
Agree with their policies: 5%
To… pic.twitter.com/i76S3Zlghu

— YouGov (@YouGov) July 3, 2024

Here’s the British satirist Jonathan Pie with a graphic summary of the damage, in many cases irreversible, the Conservative Party has inflicted on the United Kingdom and its people during its 14-year tenure:

Looking back on 14 years of the Tories is like looking back at the traumatising post-vindaloo shit you just did in the toilet. pic.twitter.com/HZLzOolD7A

— Jonathan Pie (@JonathanPieNews) July 2, 2024

One thing Pie doesn’t mention are all the measures and policies that recent Conservative governments have adopted to turn the UK into a digital police state. As we noted in August 2023, it increasingly seems that the UK decoupled from the European Union, its rules and regulations, only for its government to take the country in a progressively more authoritarian direction:

This is, of course, a generalised trend among ostensibly “liberal democracies” just about everywhere, including EU Member States, as they increasingly adopt the trappings and tactics of more authoritarian regimes, such as restricting free speech, cancelling people and weakening the rule of law. But the UK is most definitely at the leading edge of this trend. A case in point is the Home Office’s naked enthusiasm for biometric surveillance and control technologies.

Digital Surveillance and Control

The situation is unlikely to improve under a Starmer government, and could actually get worse. As we reported in May, the former PM Tony Blair and his associates are likely to wield significant influence over a Keir Starmer government, albeit from behind the scenes, and Blair and his modestly named foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, or TBI, see digital surveillance and control technologies as the cure-all to many of the world’s problems:

Many of the key positions in a Starmer government will be filled by members of the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, which has spent the past four years purging the party of its genuine left-wing politicians and members, including former party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and the veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach. As the veteran US journalist Robert Kuttner writes, Starmer “has virtually outsourced his entire program to Tony Blair” and his modestly named non-profit foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (often shortened to TBI).

A recent feature article in the London Times, titled “Tony Blair: Politics Is for the Weird and the Wealthy”, provides a glimpse of just how much influence Blair and TBI are likely to wield during a Starmer government:

Starmer, who shared a stage with Blair at the TBI’s Future of Britain conference last summer, has populated his team with Blairites — including the former Blair special adviser Matthew Doyle, now Starmer’s director of communications; the former Blair strategist and speechwriter Peter Hyman, who is a senior adviser; and another former Blair special adviser, Peter Kyle, now the shadow science secretary. In particular Kyle and Wes Streeting, the glossy shadow health secretary, are said to act as Blair’s emissaries around the shadow cabinet table…

Blair’s Digital Nirvana

There is an almost evangelical zeal to Blair’s faith in digital technologies, including biometrics. As the Times article notes, Blair’s prescriptions are, unsurprisingly, technocratic. They include promoting the full gamut of “digital public infrastructure”, or DPI, currently being rolled out in countries across the Global South, often with World Bank loans and financing from billionaire philanthro-capitalists like Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar.

Blair has repeatedly called for the development of a digital identity system in the UK, after trying but failing as prime minister to introduce an identity card system in the country. In a speech at the World Economic Forum’s 2020 cyber attack simulation event, “Cyber Polygon”, he told the event’s participants that Digital Identity would form an “inevitable” part of the digital ecosystem being constructed around us, and so government should work with technology companies to regulate their use — as the EU and Australia have already done.

As the following infographic from the World Economic Forum shows, a full-fledged digital identity system, as currently conceived, could end up touching just about every aspect of our lives, from our health (including the vaccines we are supposed to receive) to our money (particularly once central bank digital currencies are rolled out), to our business activities, our private and public communications, the information we are able to access, our dealings with government, the food we eat and the goods we buy. It could also offer governments and the companies they partner with unprecedented levels of surveillance and control powers.

Blair and his non-profit are not the only ones calling for the development and roll out of a digital identity system in the UK. In a letter sent to all four of the country’s main political parties (Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems and the Scottish National Party) just days before the election, an assortment of companies and trade bodies within the UK’s fintech and digital identity ecosystem called on the next government to recommit to moving forward with the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework (DIATF) and digital verification in the UK “as a matter of urgency”.

The letter came on the heels of the outgoing Sunak government’s failure to advance the Data Protection and Digital Information (DPDI) Bill before the dissolution of parliament. According to the industry publication Biometric Update, “the Bill would have created the legal basis for the DIATF to become a cornerstone of a secure digital economy, and enabled the use of trusted data sources without the government having to develop new identity services.”

The letter was signed by Julian David, the CEO of techUK, the UK’s biggest tech lobbying association, as well as Chris Hayward, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, the powerful and opaque governing body of London’s Square Mile where Britain’s financial interests are overwhelmingly located. Other signatories included Yoti CEO Robin Tombs, Open Identity Exchange (OIX) Chief Identity Strategist Nick Mothershaw, and OneID CEO Paula Sussex.

These are among the 40 or so companies that have already invested in certification to the DIATF and developing the digital identity verification products needed by individuals and other businesses. The value of those investments has now been cast in doubt. On top of that, the letter claims that introducing a robust digital identity and verification system would help to grow the UK economy as well as create a safer Internet by reducing “fraud, money laundering and (yes, you guessed it) misinformation”:

The digital economy has already proven to be an important lever of growth and innovation for a modern economy such as the UK. However, its continued development is impeded by the difficulty of transacting with trust and by the growth in fraud, money laundering and misinformation through digital channels.

There is a mature and market-ready technology that is already offering real solutions to these challenges. Digital Identity technology provides a secure method for individuals to verify their identity and authenticate themselves both in the physical and online worlds. The adoption and use of Digital ID could provide an additional £800 million to the UK economy every year… [S]upporting and driving forward the UK’s Digital ID industry is key to encourage inward investment into the UK in this innovative, cutting edge technology.

Keeping Up With India and Australia

The letter urged the next government to address the urgent situation, and set up “an independent and accountable regulator with clearly defined functions, duties, and powers” to oversee the system. It also argues that the UK needs to keep up with digital ID developments across the Channel in the EU, as well as in countries like India and Australia. This is how these kinds of technologies creep into existence around the world — first with a few trailblazers, and then all other countries are urged to get with the program.

A Keir Starmer government will almost certainly be happy to play catch up. Like his mentor, Blair, Starmer has clear technocratic sensibilities. On his return from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos in January, he was asked on a news podcast to choose between Davos or Westminster. Without hesitation, he answered: Davos. There, he said, you “actually engage with people that you can see working with in the future.” Westminster, by contrast, is just a “shouting place”.

“So let us ask – you have to choose between Davos & Westminster?”

Keir Starmer – “Davos” pic.twitter.com/NMIEEFUWBf

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) June 12, 2024

The World Economic Forum, of course, has done more than just about any other organisation to push the development and roll out of digital identity systems, especially since signing its strategic partnership with the UN in 2019.

In a 2018 report on digital IDs, the WEF admitted that while verifiable digital identities “create new markets and business lines” for companies, especially those in the tech industry that help to operate the ID systems while no doubt vacuuming up the data, for individuals they “open up (or close off) the digital world with its jobs, political activities, education, financial services, healthcare and more.” It is the part in brackets — the “closing off” of the digital (and to a certain extent, the analog) realm — that should trouble us all.

What should also trouble us is the security and integrity of all the additional data, including quite possibly our biometric identifiers, being gathered and stored about us. Just over a week ago, it was revealed by 404 Media that AU10TIX, an Israeli company that verifies identities for financial firms and many of the world’s largest social media companies and that has deep ties to Israel’s military and intelligence agencies, had exposed a set of administrative credentials online for more than a year potentially allowing hackers to access that sensitive data.

AU10TIX’s gamut of services includes verifying identity documents with selfie biometrics, conducting real-time biometric liveness detection video streams, and performing age verification through facial analysis. As the 404 Media article concludes, this latest breach, which exposed highly sensitive information such as driver’s licenses and ID numbers, serves as a reminder that the tech companies offering ID verification services — including, of course, the ones urging the UK’s new government to fast track the creation of a standardised digital identity and verification system — can also get hacked.