{"id":89162,"date":"2026-01-14T08:38:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=89162"},"modified":"2026-01-14T08:38:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T08:38:05","slug":"people-will-not-accept-enforced-prejudice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/01\/14\/people-will-not-accept-enforced-prejudice\/","title":{"rendered":"People will not accept enforced prejudice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour is continuing to prove it is inept. As the Guardian reports<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n

\n

Ministers have rolled back plans for a central element of the proposed digital ID plans, leaving open the possibility that people will be able to use other forms of identification to prove their right to work.<\/p>\n

This will mean that the IDs,\u00a0announced to some controversy in September<\/a>, will no longer be mandatory for working-age people, given that the only planned obligatory element was to prove the right to work in the UK.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why has the policy failed? Because people did not want it to be compulsory or to be used for penal purposes against immigrants.\u00a0 Both were overreach, and it is clear that the government had a disaster in the making on its hands if it had pushed the issue.<\/p>\n

What to conclude? Three things.<\/p>\n

One is that Labour cannot think. That this was going to fail was obvious from the outset.<\/p>\n

The second is that this shows a party to be massively out of step with the country it governs.<\/p>\n

The third is something perhaps more important. It is that this country is not ready for, and would not welcome, authoritarianism and serious constraints on liberties imposed by a government seeking to enforce structural prejudice. There is some hope in that. Reform should take note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Labour is continuing to prove it is inept. As the Guardian reports this morning: Ministers have rolled back plans for a central element of the
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89163,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89162\/revisions\/89163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}