Identity cards might well be convenient: and, in any case, they are already here
Last week, in my digital dealings with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, I experienced something truly fascinating. Yes, I know. Subjective. Dangerous sentence. Bear with me. It was an epiphany. The right time of year for it, I am told.
In a few weeks’ time I have to hire a car. A few weeks ago I lost my wallet, which contained my driver’s licence. With exactly the sort of organisational forward planning that normally escapes me, I had considered these two details in tandem, and acted to prevent the wife and me ending up on one. So, I trotted along to the DVLA website and I applied for a new one. It took me about 20 minutes.
That was not the epiphany. Indeed, etymological pedants of a religious bent may feel that it was nothing like an epiphany. Something as mundane as a miracle, perhaps. I filled out boxes, I ticked squares, everything worked. I kept waiting for the usual snarl-up, the seemingly innocuous instruction that takes you a week to fulfil — ‘tick this box if you have already delivered eight photographs of your maternal grandmother signed by your family dentist to the following business park in Swansea’, that sort of thing — and it just didn’t happen. I didn’t need to register, as I had apparently done so already, by creating something called a Government Gateway account when filing my tax return. I didn’t need to send them a photograph, as they still had my old one on file. I didn’t need to prove my address, as they had the electoral roll. I didn’t need to send them proof of identity, as they could look up my passport, just from the number. Seriously. Twenty minutes. Bang. The website said it would be with me in ten days.
I’m sorry to go on about this, as I realise that ‘fascinating’ tag may already be in jeopardy, but I was genuinely staggered. You just don’t expect this kind of thing in modern Britain. The NHS is bonkers, the Inland Revenue insane. Months can be lost getting your local council to chop down a tree. A driver’s licence in 20 minutes? Really?
And then, as I sat there, reeling, a thought struck me. ‘Maybe,’ I said to myself, ‘I am in favour of identity cards.’ This, just so you know, was not the epiphany either, even if, etymologically speaking, it might fit the bill.
It was, nonetheless, quite an interesting experience. I have always been against identity cards, and staunchly. If somebody said to me, ‘What are your views on identity cards?’, I would have said, staunchly, ‘Against!’ And yet here I was, suddenly seeing their point. Because I am also against, equally staunchly, queues in post offices, and MOT forms, and the way that you never have enough forms of the right sort when you try to get a parking permit or interact in any way with your local council offices, where they hate you. God knows what it must be like collecting benefits or a pension. God knows what it is like being old.
The opponents of identity cards are the ones with passion. Did you see David Miliband, defending the things on TV last Sunday? Thoroughly insipid. Worse, missing an ideological cog. This is a government, remember, that two years ago suggested a road-pricing scheme whereby we all have little black boxes in our cars, monitoring our every move. Not a sniff of civil liberties angst from any of them. Sleepwalking towards the Stasi. And all this time, they could just have said it. ‘Modern life is hell and getting worse. This will make it easier.’ Look, I’m not convinced. I still get the downside. I have just seen the upside, too.
But like I said, that still wasn’t the epiphany. No, the epiphany happened just afterwards. I thought about it all, about my Government Gateway account, which had suddenly loomed up via the DVLA, when I had created it via the Inland Revenue. I thought about my passport, to which they had digital access. I thought about my place on the Electoral Roll, created by reply to a letter from my local council. That was it. That was the epiphany. There is no point being against identity cards. They are inevitable. In fact, they are more than inevitable. They are irrelevant. Everything that matters about them is already here.
When the Conservatives claim to be ‘against identity cards’, it is a meaningless boast. Or worse, it is a dishonest one. Think of Gordon Brown, abandoning the EU constitution, and ending up with an EU treaty that is technically the same, but called something different. With identity cards, this is all that David Cameron can offer us. Ditch the name, keep everything else. The system is already there.
So, maybe it is better, when something looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, that we call it a duck. The duck is already here. Right now, opponents of identity cards are just saying we should call it a chicken.
Iam fascinated, as presumably are we all, by the state of Jeremy Paxman’s straining underpants. While I may be grasping at straws (quite unlike Jeremy, evidently), I cannot help but think that this yearning gusset malaise gives us a fascinating insight into the mind, and the irritation, of the nation’s interrogator-in-chief.
He wrote to Sir Stuart Rose privately. That is the bit that really grabs me. He had an unsatisfying M&S underpants experience and his response was to fire off a private email to the boss. An open letter, that would have suggested humility, self-awareness, a spirit of fun. But no. A private email. ‘I was hoping to do some good by stealth,’ he said later, when pressed. ‘I am very concerned that they have taken their eye off the ball.’ Ball. That could have been humour, couldn’t it? Once, I would have been certain. Now, not really. How often, one has to wonder, does Jeremy Paxman do this sort of thing? Does he email Mr Kipling about his cakes? Messrs Tate & Lyle about their sugar? Mr Hovis about his bread, Mr Casio about his digital watch, Mr Nokia about his telephone?
To some of those questions, I am convinced the answer is yes. One thinks of the ‘black spider’ letters that Prince Charles used to write to Cabinet ministers. Paxo cannot do that. It would get in the way of the job. So he finds other things to rail about. He is the Prince Charles of the trivial. It is awful.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
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