Streeting condemns rising racism – but politicians like him helped create it
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Wes Streeting has a hell of a nerve.
The Health Secretary has apparently complained that “an “ugly” racism reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s has become worryingly commonplace again in modern Britain and NHS staff are bearing the brunt of it,” according to The Guardian.
But haven’t politicians like Streeting been stoking that racism – to distract us all from their own misdemeanours?
According to The Guardian, “Streeting told how he has been “shocked” hearing NHS staff, especially those working in A&E, recount growing levels of harassment, aggression and violence when their care gets delayed.
“Advising the public to brace themselves for the NHS in England getting overwhelmed in the coming weeks because of a triple whammy of flu, Covid and strike action by doctors as winter descends, he admitted that patients would be put in danger as a result of becoming stuck on trolleys or in the back of ambulances – situations that are known to heighten the risk of harm and death.
““Even if you’ve got a long wait, which I know is frustrating, or you feel like you’ve been sent from pillar to post, which sadly does happen, there’s no excuse for taking that out on staff,” Streeting said.
““But the thing that has shocked me most of all is that the rising tide of racism and the way in which kind of 1970s, 1980s-style racism has apparently become permissible again in this country. I’m really shocked at the way this is now impacting on NHS staff,” he said.”
Let’s get something absolutely clear:
Politicians across the spectrum have been leaning on anti-migrant narratives for years: first as a deflection from austerity’s consequences, then to excuse public service collapse, and now, under Labour as well, to cover for under-investment and system failure.
That’s right: under Labour as well.
Streeting’s words might sound like moral leadership, but they ring hollow when you look at how his own party has spent the past year chasing the same xenophobic headlines the Tories used to rely on.
Under Keir Starmer, Labour has embraced the “tough on immigration” posture, talking about “smashing the gangs”, “stopping the boats”, and even sending asylum seekers to third countries — all rhetoric designed not to solve the problem, but to outflank the right in the headlines.
(And they all failed too, just to make matters worse.)
The key point is: none of these plans were meant to work. They were gestures to reassure voters who’ve been fed years of fear about migrants, not policies to manage migration humanely or effectively.
And every time Labour parrots Tory framing — that migrants are a threat, a burden, a crisis — it legitimises the very prejudice Streeting is now condemning.
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By refusing to challenge the right-wing narrative and instead competing within it, Labour – the party to which Streeting belongs – normalised the idea that migration is inherently a problem.
That’s what gives permission for the “ugly racism” Streeting claims to abhor to flourish again — in the streets, and in NHS waiting rooms.
Don’t get me wrong – Streeting may be genuinely horrified by the resurgence of open racism — but it’s the direct result of a political culture that’s spent more than a decade normalising hostility, of which he is a part.
The tabloids and the right-wing press have pushed stories about “health tourism”, “migrant crime”, and “foreign workers taking jobs” until they have been accepted as common sense to people who are struggling and looking for someone to blame.
It’s a process called ‘The Big Lie’ – if you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it.
So when NHS workers — often brown or black, often foreign-born — are on the receiving end of verbal or physical abuse, it isn’t some spontaneous relapse into the 1970s.
It’s a predictable consequence of rhetoric that politicians have refused to challenge, or have even used themselves to look “tough” on immigration.
Racism is back because immigration has been used by politicians as a distraction from their own failures.
Streeting’s late moral outrage is fine, but if he and others don’t also call out the political machinery that made racism “socially acceptable” again, then they’re only condemning the symptom, while being part of the cause.
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Starmer should resign – he was briefed about Mandelson and hired him anyway
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Keir Starmer is a liability and should resign as prime minister for the good of the United Kingdom.
Right?
He received an official briefing — including a Cabinet Office report — warning that Peter Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein represented “reputational risks”.
He personally appointed Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States anyway – overriding normal Foreign Office procedure.
Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein — including staying at Epstein’s Manhattan flat after his conviction — was already public knowledge.
Starmer defended Mandelson in Parliament even after civil servants began verifying newly leaked emails showing that Mandelson expressed affection and support for Epstein.
Those emails later forced Mandelson’s sacking, exposing how reckless the original appointment had been.
By any reasonable standard of integrity, he should now consider his position.
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We know this now because Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald has told MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee what happened. Here’s The Guardian:
“Keir Starmer was briefed on details of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before he decided to make him US ambassador, senior civil servants have said.
“The prime minister received a Cabinet Office report that contained “a summary of reputational risks” associated with appointing Lord Mandelson, including his “prior relationship with Jeffrey Epstein” and past resignations as a Labour minister.
“Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, told MPs that the report contained “direct extracts from media reporting and notes a general reputational risk” arising from making the appointment.
“Speaking at the foreign affairs select committee, he said the “judgment about whether to make the appointment or not” had ultimately been one for Starmer.
“Mandelson’s longstanding friendship with Epstein, which continued after the disgraced financier was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, was a matter of public record before his appointment was made.”
Keir Starmer was explicitly told that Peter Mandelson’s association with Jeffrey Epstein posed “reputational risks”, and he went ahead with the appointment anyway.
That briefing, according to the Cabinet Secretary, included direct extracts from media reports about Mandelson’s links with Epstein and mentioned his prior ministerial resignations — so Starmer can’t claim ignorance.
If you’re prime minister, then once you know that someone you’re appointing to a senior diplomatic post has a documented relationship with a convicted sex offender — and that they stayed at that offender’s home even after the conviction — the “judgement” call becomes purely political.
The question isn’t whether he knew; it’s whether he decided those risks didn’t matter. And by making the appointment regardless, he took ownership of those risks.
That means the fallout from the later revelation of the 2008 “love and support” emails isn’t just Mandelson’s scandal — it’s Starmer’s misjudgment.
The Cabinet Office report and the Foreign Office’s testimony make clear that Starmer was warned but pressed on anyway.
That fits a familiar pattern: a leader prioritising connections and loyalty over propriety.
So the responsibility for appointing a man already publicly linked to Epstein lies squarely with Starmer.
The later sacking doesn’t erase the original decision — it only underscores how reckless it was.
Why did he appoint Mandelson, in the light of the facts?
“Jobs for the boys,” I expect.
Peter Mandelson has long been part of Labour’s old Blairite establishment: the inner circle that rebuilt the party in the 1990s, dominated it under Tony Blair, and later backed Starmer’s leadership campaign as a route back to power and influence.
Mandelson’s role as a behind-the-scenes adviser during Starmer’s rise is well-documented — he reportedly helped shape the early strategy and candidate selections after 2020.
So when Starmer personally overrode the Foreign Office’s usual process to install Mandelson as US ambassador — despite warnings about “reputational risks” — it looked exactly like a “jobs for the boys” appointment: rewarding an ally from the right wing of the party with a prestigious, high-profile post.
The fact that civil servants described the decision as one the prime minister made himself reinforces that impression.
So this has all the hallmarks of a patronage appointment: Starmer looking after a loyal member of the Labour elite rather than choosing on merit or integrity.
It’s the kind of insider favouritism that New Labour was once accused of institutionalising — and part of a sad pattern that many prime ministers have followed.
Peter Mandelson himself is a classic case. Blair twice brought him back into government after Mandelson had been forced to resign over scandals (the 1998 mortgage loan from Geoffrey Robinson, and the 1999 Hinduja passport affair).
In both instances, Blair said Mandelson’s “talents outweighed past mistakes” — which is political code for loyalty matters more than reputation.
Mandelson also became a close personal adviser to Blair on EU and global contacts, despite deep unease in Whitehall.
David Cameron appointed his old friend and party donor Lord (Andrew) Feldman as Conservative Party co-chairman — a role critics said blurred the line between government and party fundraising.
More recently, Cameron’s own return to government as Foreign Secretary under Rishi Sunak (2023) was widely condemned as an insider move: a “revolving door” appointment bringing back a disgraced former PM via a peerage, rather than open recruitment.
Boris Johnson’s appointments were notorious for prioritising personal loyalty:
- Lord Lebedev, the son of a former KGB officer, was made a peer despite security service warnings; Johnson pushed it through personally.
- Chris Pincher, appointed Deputy Chief Whip despite known misconduct allegations, later caused Johnson’s downfall.
- Johnson also placed allies such as Dido Harding and James Wharton into senior roles without competitive process.
Liz Truss’s short-lived government leaned heavily on ideological allies from the Tufton Street network, such as Kwasi Kwarteng and various think-tank alumni, disregarding wider advice from the civil service.
Rishi Sunak retained ministers like Suella Braverman and Gavin Williamson even after major controversies, simply to appease party factions — until pressure forced resignations.
Seen against that background, Starmer’s decision to push ahead with Mandelson’s appointment despite clear reputational warnings is part of a well-established Westminster culture: leaders protecting their own.
Put it all together, and what we’re looking at isn’t a one-off misjudgement; it’s a conscious participation in a long-standing Westminster culture of cronyism, where personal loyalty and insider status trump ethical standards or public trust.
Starmer was warned that appointing Peter Mandelson carried serious reputational risk because of his association with a convicted sex offender — and he chose to proceed.
That shows deliberate disregard for propriety, not an oversight.
When a prime minister knowingly appoints a tainted ally to a major diplomatic role, and then defends him in Parliament even as new evidence emerges, it goes to the heart of political accountability.
The concept that leaders should consider their future when their judgement so clearly fails the public test — applies here as squarely as it did to Boris Johnson over Partygate, to Liz Truss after her economic collapse, or to ministers in earlier eras who resigned over far less.
Starmer built his political brand on “integrity, professionalism, and accountability.”
If those words still mean anything, then by his own standards, this episode demands that he reconsider whether he has the moral authority to lead.
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Farage to offer increased corruption in business if Reform UK is elected
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Watch the video clip of this article:
A Reform UK government will strip away the safeguards that prevent exploitation, environmental abuse, unsafe products, and financial misconduct in business.
That’s what his plan for a bonfire of business regulation actually means in practice – as bitter experience has shown.
According to The Guardian, in a speech today (Monday, November 3, 2025), Farage was expected to say: “When it comes to Brexit … we have not taken advantage of the opportunities to deregulate and become more competitive. The harsh truth is that regulations and regulators, in many areas, are worse than they were back in 2016.”
What does he mean by “worse”? Does he mean they are more effective at preventing crime and corruption? That’s how it seems to This Writer!
He will add: “Reform UK will do things very differently. We will be the most pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship government this country has seen in modern times. This will mean more well-paid jobs for workers.”
How is that going to work? Deregulation means fewer rules binding business bosses into fair treatment of workers.
“We will free businesses to get on and make more money. We will bring into government people with real expertise in their areas. And we will signal a change of attitude towards work, making money and success.”
It seems to me he is promising that bosses will be able to make more money for themselves, with fewer incentives to be fair.
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Deregulation always sounds attractive to business lobbyists and to politicians who want to posture as “pro-enterprise”.
But regulations exist because, time after time, companies have shown they will cut corners or cheat unless there are clear, enforceable limits.
When oversight is weakened, it becomes easier for firms to bribe officials, evade tax, or manipulate markets.
The very same “freedom to make more money” can quickly become freedom to pollute rivers, underpay workers, or defraud consumers.
There’s also a deeper irony. Farage frames deregulation as “taking advantage of Brexit opportunities”, but the European Union’s regulatory framework was precisely what protected UK citizens and ensured fair competition.
If Reform UK actually implemented this agenda, we would likely see a repeat of the post-1980s deregulation disasters: privatised monopolies, financial instability, and scandals like PPE procurement fraud — only worse, because there would be even fewer rules left.
Economically, it is incoherent as well. You can’t claim fiscal credibility by cutting the very regulatory capacity that keeps markets functioning honestly.
Deregulation doesn’t automatically lead to growth — it often leads to short-term profit-taking followed by long-term damage.
As I write this, Farage has started his speech, saying he thinks we subscribe to an illusion, denying the economic mess we’re in.
He’s also blaming mass migration for making us poorer – because we’ve brought in cheap, unskilled foreign labour? It has made a huge amount of money for low-paying employers – and aren’t those just the people Farage and his party want to support?
Farage’s new line about an “illusion” of prosperity is an attempt to sound like a truth-teller, but the blame he places on migration is a deflection.
The real driver of wage stagnation and poor working conditions in the United Kingdom has not been the presence of migrant workers; it has been the business model of the low-wage employers who rely on them — the same kind of employers Reform UK’s deregulation agenda is designed to empower.
If you look at the pattern, it’s perfectly circular:
- Farage blames migrants for low pay.
- But low pay exists because employers are allowed to underpay — and Reform’s “bonfire of regulation” would make that even easier.
- Then he claims deregulation will “create jobs and growth” — but what it actually creates is the freedom for exploitative firms to cut costs further.
This is the illusion we are really living under: that loosening the rules on business will somehow raise everyone’s living standards.
In truth, it widens inequality and concentrates wealth in the same hands.
It’s also dishonest economically. Migrant workers contribute billions in taxes and fill essential roles in sectors starved of investment. The problem is not migration, but the deliberate suppression of wages, weak enforcement of labour law, and the government’s refusal to invest in skills and productivity.
Yes, the United Kingdom is in a deep economic mess. Real wages are stagnant, productivity has flatlined, public services are crumbling, and living costs remain far higher than they were before 2020. But none of that has been caused by the things Farage is blaming — migration, regulation, or supposed “anti-business attitudes”.
The real causes are structural and political:
- Austerity gutted public investment and hollowed out local economies.
- Privatisation and deregulation handed public wealth to private monopolies that prioritise dividends over service quality.
- Financialisation encouraged short-term profit extraction instead of long-term productive growth.
- Brexit, Farage’s own signature project, imposed trade barriers, worsened labour shortages, and deterred investment.
So when Farage says we are “in denial” about the economic situation, what he means is: we’re not accepting his version of what went wrong. It’s a rhetorical trap — acknowledge the crisis, and he tries to claim it validates his anti-migrant, pro-deregulation narrative. But in truth, that narrative helped create the mess.
If the UK is in denial about anything, it’s the fact that deregulation and nationalist economics have already been tested — and have failed catastrophically.
Then there’s his criticism of putting ministers in charge of big government departments, who don’t understand the industries they’re now helming. Is he right in thinking that business leaders could do it better than someone who will be obliged to consider the effect of changes on workers, the public, and the environment, and who are aided by expert civil servants?
No.
It’s just another superficially appealing idea that collapses under scrutiny.
Farage is right about one thing: too many ministers are parachuted into departments with little relevant experience, and that can lead to poor decisions.
But his solution — to “bring in people with real expertise” from business — is not reform, it’s capture.
It replaces one kind of incompetence with another: a deliberate bias towards private profit over public interest.
The civil service exists precisely to counter that. Ministers are not supposed to be industry insiders; they are supposed to represent the public, weigh competing priorities, and make decisions based on expert advice from career civil servants who understand both the policy area and the ethical boundaries of governance.
Business leaders, by contrast, are trained to maximise shareholder value — not to safeguard workers’ rights, protect the environment, or maintain public accountability.
We have already seen what happens when governments hand control to corporate insiders:
- Water companies run by financiers rather than engineers have polluted rivers while paying out billions in dividends.
- Rail and energy privatisation allowed profit extraction to trump public service.
- Covid procurement showed how “bringing in people who know business” can turn into cronyism and corruption.
Farage’s proposal is a textbook example of what economists call regulatory capture — when industries end up writing the rules that govern them. It’s not a fix for bureaucratic inefficiency; it’s an invitation to self-dealing on a national scale.
In short, he’s exploiting a real frustration with government incompetence to sell a false solution: turning the state into a business club.
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Media and political messaging has manufactured panic in the UK over immigration
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UK citizens’ personal, lived experience of immigration as a local problem is limited — but the perception that it is a major national issue is much higher, according to research by pollsters.
YouGov polling has found that only 26 per cent of people think immigration/asylum is one of the top three issues locally, while 52 per cent say it is one of the top three national issues.
That discrepancy suggests that public concern is being driven by media and political messaging, not by people’s own communities or experiences.
As a result, charities are saying concern over immigration and asylum is a “manufactured panic” — a media- and politics-fuelled perception rather than a ground-level reality.
And it seems these fears – stoked by politicians and their friends in the mainstream media – have changed attitudes about national identity against cultural diversity to a degree that now means we are more opposed to these things than Americans under Donald Trump – because we have been told to be.
The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has found that, when asked questions about diversity, national identity, ethnic change and the like, British respondents — especially those on the right — gave more “nativist answers than Americans.
Examples include:
- 70 per cent of UK right-wingers saying it is bad if white people decline as a share of the population (v 43 per cent of Trump voters).
- 81 per cent of Conservatives/Reform voters saying the UK risks “losing its identity” by being too open to outsiders (v 65 per cent of Trump voters).
So: many British people now hold strong views about immigration and identity, regardless of whether it touches their daily lives – because they have been told to.
The way public opinion is being manipulated over immigration today follows the exact same pattern I described eight years ago when writing about disability hate.
Then, the Department for Work and Pensions and its media allies stoked resentment against sick and disabled people, branding them as “scroungers” and “workshy” to justify the demolition of the welfare state.
Now, politicians and their client media are using the same rhetorical machinery to turn public attention against migrants and asylum seekers.
In both cases, the process is simple and deliberate: a minister makes a claim – “there’s a growing fear that the UK is being overrun by immigrants” – and the press repeats it.
News programmes and newspapers amplify the story until the public begins to believe there really is such a fear. What begins as an elite talking point becomes a national obsession. Social psychologists call this “agenda-setting” and “framing”; I called it “nudging”. Either way, it is manipulation.
When the media make immigration sound like the country’s biggest crisis, people begin to treat it as one – even when it is not affecting their communities at all.
The new YouGov polling shows that only a quarter of respondents consider immigration a local problem, but twice as many think it is a major national issue. That discrepancy does not come from experience; it comes from exposure.
The same headlines that once convinced the public that disabled people were “cheats” are now telling them migrants are an “invasion”.
The method is identical: find a vulnerable group, frame it as a threat to “hard-working taxpayers”, repeat it until the public believes it, and then claim to be “responding to public demand” by introducing ever harsher policies.
It worked against the disabled, and it is working again now – against refugees and migrants who have done nothing wrong beyond seeking safety or opportunity.
The motive is also the same: distraction.
The welfare scapegoating of the 2010s masked the damage caused by austerity.
The immigration hysteria of the 2020s masks the failure to fix the cost-of-living crisis, rebuild public services, or reverse the economic harm of Brexit.
Each time, the government escapes accountability by turning neighbour against neighbour.
We should have learned the lesson by now.
When ministers and their media echo chambers tell us to hate someone, it is usually to stop us noticing what they are doing to everyone else.
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Starmer’s digital ID plan: insecure – untrusted – and unwanted
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So much for “security at its core”.
The government’s digital ID system – a scheme that will make it impossible to work without official state approval – has been branded insecure, untrusted and potentially catastrophic.
According to a BBC investigation, the systems at the heart of Keir Starmer’s planned digital identity plan are already riddled with vulnerabilities.
Whistleblowers, MPs and technology experts are warning that the very structure of the project could expose the personal data of millions of people to hackers, criminals and hostile states.
The prime minister insists that the system will be secure. But the evidence suggests that, if anything, hackers are at the centre of it.
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The plan nobody asked for
Under the proposals, every UK citizen and legal resident will be offered a digital identity – but for most people, it won’t be optional.
The government intends to make it mandatory for employment, meaning anyone who wants a job will need to sign up.
So much for “choice”.
It’s a policy that should chill anyone who values civil liberties.
The state is creating a database of every working person in the UK, potentially able to track where you live, what you do, and – depending on what’s added later – how you interact with public services.
Polls show most people do not want digital ID, for the very reason that it could be used to restrict rather than enable freedom.
Yet Starmer’s government is pressing ahead, insisting it will somehow be different from every previous attempt.
The Blair government tried to impose ID cards two decades ago.
That plan was abandoned after a wave of public outrage forced ministers to back down.
Now the idea is back, digitally re-branded – but even more dangerous.
‘Worse than Horizon’
Conservative MP David Davis has sounded the loudest alarm yet. Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate, he said:
“What will happen when this system comes into effect is that the entire population’s entire data will be open to malevolent actors – foreign nations, ransomware criminals, malevolent hackers and even their own personal or political enemies.
“This will be worse than the Horizon scandal.”
That comparison should make the government sweat.
The Horizon IT system destroyed the lives of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters because ministers and officials refused to believe their technology could be wrong.
Now we have the prospect of another government-run system, this time tied to the identity of every person in the country – and run by many of the same kinds of departments and contractors that gave us Horizon in the first place.
Davis has written to the National Audit Office demanding an urgent investigation into the soaring cost of the scheme, which has already topped £305 million.
He also raised the alarm over a 2022 incident in which developers in Romania – working on unsecured computers and lacking proper security clearance – had access to parts of the Gov.uk One Login system.
That’s the platform on which the entire digital ID scheme rests.
Red teams, red flags
The BBC reports that a “red team” – specialists hired to simulate real-world cyber-attacks – were able to gain privileged access to One Login systems earlier this year.
If true, that means hackers could, in theory, do the same.
A whistleblower told the Liberal Democrat technology spokesman Lord Clement-Jones that the government missed its own national cybersecurity deadline, and that One Login will not pass required tests until March 2026.
That’s long after the government wants people to start using it.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) insists that its systems are robust, claiming they “follow the highest security standards used across government and the private sector”.
But we’ve heard all that before.
We heard it from the Post Office.
We heard it from the Home Office over the Windrush database.
And we’ve heard it after every government data breach that ever made the news.
DSIT also admitted that One Login’s certification under the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework lapsed earlier this year – meaning that, for months, it hasn’t even been officially classed as a “trusted” identity system.
The department blames a supplier and says the certificate will be restored “imminently”.
But in cybersecurity, “imminent” isn’t good enough.
Hackers don’t wait for paperwork.
Not one database – but many targets
To reassure the public, ministers say there will be no single centralised database of citizens.
Instead, personal data will be stored in different government departments, linked through the One Login and Gov.uk Wallet systems.
In theory, that’s meant to reduce risk.
In practice, it means more attack surfaces – and more weak points.
Each department’s servers could become a target, and the more connections there are between them, the more opportunities hackers have to exploit them.
In the digital world, every door is a potential break-in point.
This system proposes to build hundreds of doors – and hand out millions of keys.
“Security at its core”? Pull the other one
Starmer told reporters that digital ID “will have security at its core”.
The evidence suggests the only things at its core are hackers.
Even the government’s own watchdogs don’t trust the project.
Lord Clement-Jones says One Login still fails to meet National Cyber Security Centre standards.
Davis warns that if the government gets this wrong, the entire population’s private data could be laid open to anyone with the skills and motivation to take it.
And remember – once your digital ID exists, you can’t change it.
You can’t reset your date of birth.
You can’t swap your fingerprints.
If a hacker steals your digital identity, you’re compromised for life.
Centralising control
Starmer’s decision to move overall responsibility for the project to the Cabinet Office – under his loyal lieutenant Darren Jones – shows how politically sensitive it has become.
But that’s not accountability – it’s containment.
The Government Digital Service, still under DSIT, will keep building the system, while the Cabinet Office handles the politics.
So if it goes wrong, Starmer can claim it’s someone else’s fault.
We’ve seen that before, too.
Meanwhile, the government boasts that more than 12 million people have already signed up for One Login, mostly to access routine services like tax or benefits.
By this time next year, that could rise to 20 million as company directors are forced to register through it.
The trap is already being baited.
A danger disguised as convenience
Officials talk about “streamlining access to services”, “reducing fraud” and “improving efficiency”. That’s the sugar-coating.
The reality is a system that could one day be used to control who gets a job, who can rent a home, who can claim benefits – or who can be quietly locked out.
This isn’t paranoia; it’s precedent. Every authoritarian regime starts by making identification sound like common sense.
It ends with you needing government permission to exist.
The Whip Line
You’ll need Starmer’s permission to work – and hackers might get there before you.
The UK doesn’t need a digital ID system that hands power to the state and data to criminals. We need a government that understands privacy, liberty and competence.
Right now, we have none of those three things.
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