Some optimistic people have ben suggesting that Gordon Brown would abandon the expensive, intrusive and dangerous plans to impose UK Identity Cards and the National Identity Register (NIR) on the UK. That has now appears to have been a false hope.

The NO2ID news blog reports this exchange from the Radio 4 "Today" programme:

R4: Are you committed to the ID card plan? GB: Yes. We are going through with the ID plan, and - R4: No rethink. GB: What I said yesterday, I think it's a very important point here, if you are in a situation, where you or I, could easily have my identity stolen, then that is a threat to my privacy and my civil liberties, and that is an increasingly common feature of our society.

So it appears that Brown is going to be as bad as Blair. The striking thing here is not just his support for ID cards but also the way he repeats Blair's trick of trying to define away our civil liberties.

If the goverment were to propose a truly voluntary scheme that protects our privacy and puts our identity under our control rather than under control of the state then I would support it. That is the exact opposite of what Tony Blair's government has planned - plans which it now seems Brown's government will implement.

Building a huge surveillance infrastructure and issuing us with a licence to live is an attack on our civil liberties, not a defence of them.

So it looks like I'll continue to vote against Labour for the forseeable future.

Gordon Brown ID cards identity cards NIR UK politicsukpolitics