Anti-Politics and the BritCard

Yesterday’s election result in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse represents a nadir of Scottish politics, with the election of a candidate who spent most of the campaign in hiding from the media, or being hidden from the public, by his own party, because he was incapable of stringing a sentence together.

That Davy Russell should be elected on behalf of this Labour Party by people in Scotland is remarkable, and testimony to the desultory nature of the alternatives on offer, whether that be John Swinney’s listless, directionless SNP or Nigel Farage’s rancid political project.

Many of the commentariat were salivating at the prospect of a Reform victory – either for the opportunity to claim the SNP’s imminent demise, or to pronounce the Death of Scottish Exceptionalism.

They have collectively been guilty of sanitising and sanewashing Reform, reminding anyone and everyone not to call them ‘far-right’ to listen to ‘legitimate concerns’ and so on (and on). This week was a stark reminder that they are what they say they are – after their chair Zia Yusuf quit the party after the party’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, asked the prime minister if he would ban the burqa. But you don’t need to look just to Reform to see some authoritarian crisis coming down the tracks.

Yesterday Labour published a paper making the case for a ‘BritCard’. “A mandatory national ID that would be issued free of charge to all those with the right to live or work in the UK, whether they are British-born nationals or legal migrants. The BritCard would be a verifiable digital credential downloaded onto a user’s smartphone, which could be instantly checked.”

This is clever and terrifying. It’s a fusion of digital surveillance, authoritarianism and British Nationalism rolled into one. It’s using the climate of fear created by Brexit and Theresa May’s Hostile Environment and the pervasive racism of contemporary England to introduce an identity card once roundly rejected by any progressive person.

But it also fuses the carefully nurtured hostility that’s been directed to anyone claiming benefits. As the MP Clive Lewis said: “BritCard – brought to you by Palantir. All part of a repression ready, gift-wrapped surveillance state for Farage to pick up and run with. Remember kids – authoritarianism is OK when it has a friendly font.”

This is the inevitable result of the race to the bottom of Starmer’s Labour versus Farage’s Reform. It’s the ‘brainchild’ of Jonathan Ashworth’s ‘Labour Together’ project, which the Sunday Times called a “secretive group” run by the “secretive guru” Morgan McSweeney.

The language is meant to sound progressive even if the outcomes would be dystopian: “For a progressive society to work, it needs to be able to collectively agree who is allowed to join it.”

This is classic Blue Labour.

Let’s be clear, it’s a mandatory national identity, and that nationality is British.

The language is explicitly racist and appealing to the worst of peoples fears and insecurities: “This paper makes the case for the introduction of BritCard: a mandatory national digital identity that would be issued free of charge to all those with the right to live or work in the UK, whether they are British-born nationals or legal migrants.”

We are told that: “The BritCard would be a verifiable digital credential downloaded onto a user’s smartphone, which could be instantly checked by employers or landlords.”

In what world are you having a landlord check your identity?

It goes on: “By introducing a mandatory, universal, national identity credential – BritCard – the Labour Government has the opportunity to build a new piece of civic infrastructure, something that would become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country.”

None of this is surprising. As George Monbiot wrote recently: “This feels terminal. The breaches of trust have been so frequent, so vast and so decisive that the voters Labour has already lost are unlikely to return. In one forum after another, I hear the same sentiments: “I voted for change, not the same or worse.” “I’ve voted Labour all my life, but that’s it for me.” “I feel I’ve been had.”

“It’s not dissatisfaction. It’s not disillusionment. It’s revulsion: visceral fury, anger on a level I’ve seldom seen before, even towards Tory cruelties. Why? Because these are Tory cruelties, delivered by a party that claimed to be the only alternative, in our first-past-the-post electoral system.”

“Everyone can name at least some of the betrayals: cutting disability benefits; supplying weapons and, allegedly, intelligence to the Israeli government as it pursues genocide in Gaza; channelling Reform UK and Enoch Powell in maligning immigrants; slashing international aid; trashing wildlife and habitats while insulting and abusing people who want to protect them; announcing yet another draconian anti-protest law; imposing further austerity on government departments and public services. Once the great hope of the oppressed, Labour has become the oppressor.”

Back to Larkhall.

It’s dressed as giving the incumbent a ‘bloody nose’, or, remarkably, a sign of Anas Sarwar’s great leadership (there was mumbling about how he’d have to go if Labour came third only a few days ago). Or, as Mandy Rhodes, editor of Holyrood Magazine remarkably put it: “Quick thought on Hamilton win for Labour is that a local campaign on local issues with a solidly local candidate that was underestimated by the others, is wot won it.”

What’s at stake while such results are being celebrated is assimilation and erasure and the British state operating mandatory digital surveillance. The future within the Union is being mapped out before us, and it’s time to wake up and get out.

But just saying ‘put independence front and centre’ isn’t enough. There needs to be the hard work done to re-make the case for independence and re-launch a campaign with a clear strategy and vision. It is not really about individuals, it’s about actions and tenor and courage. But as Adam Ramsay has said: “It’s hard to hate John Swinney – no one I spoke to yesterday was rude about him. But then, no one mentioned him at all. It’s hard to point to anything objectionable he has done. But I doubt anyone could have gestured towards anything he had done.”

We are sleepwalking into a surveillance state – where our identity and civil rights will be bought and sold. The three main British parties are in competition, as Labour proposes an identity card, the Conservatives propose departing the ECHR and Reform discuss how quickly they should deport millions of people. This is political convergence.

More on the BritCard here: BritCard: a progressive digital identity for Britain — Labour Together