An overseas digital identity acquaintance of mine recently posted a harmless LinkedIn update: coming to the UK to speak on a panel, curious what Brits think about digital ID. Pretty gentle, nerdy stuff.
A few hours later his comments were a wall of fury; conspiracies of soul-harvesting, globalist plots. The wrath of British LinkedIn had arrived.
Britain’s relationship with “papers, please” is uniquely emotional, shaped by centuries of uncomfortable encounters between the state and the individual. Our resistance is full-throated and patriotic, even when it makes no sense at all.
In this talk, Jaye takes us on an irreverent but insightful journey through Britain’s ID angst, from the second world war to Tony Blair's ill-fated 2000s foray, and the recent resurrection of its digital ghost.
We'll see how the coronavirus pandemic calcified our attitudes into their current dysfunctional form.
Understanding this cultural operating system is crucial, because the UK is once again building a national digital ID. And without reckoning with our past, we may doom its future.
Expect laughs, uncomfortable truths, and some truly inscrutable LinkedIn comments.
Why Britain hates digital ID: a Psycho-historical Tour [Introductory]
Jaye explains Britain’s unusually intense hostility toward digital ID by connecting three threads: a long, fraught history with national identity schemes, repeated government delivery failures, and a media-and-politics environment that primes people to interpret identity infrastructure as control rather than help. Drawing on the “Seeing Like a State” idea that states increase efficiency by making people legible (through measures like surnames, censuses, and standardized records), the talk frames British digital ID as part of a recurring push to rationalize government services—colliding with a national fear of surveillance. Britain previously tolerated identity cards only during World War II, then celebrated their abolition as “setting the people free,” reinforcing a cultural suspicion of compulsory identification outside crisis conditions.
In the modern era, Tony Blair’s New Labour attempted a centralized smart-card-and-database approach to unify identity across services; the public was comparatively positive about the card as a service-access tool but strongly opposed a “big central database.” Government Gateway then offered shared authentication but had usability and security-perception problems (forgettable long IDs; verification still pushed downstream), and the later Verify program tried to avoid centralization so aggressively that it offloaded responsibility and confused users, ultimately failing to meet its own targets. A key scandal was the gap between a projected 90% verification rate and an actual 48% rate in 2019, prompting formal investigation and cementing distrust.
Jaye argues the newer OneLogin program is more credible: it uses high-assurance methods like passport NFC scans, onboards services more realistically, and steadily expands verification routes, making it plausible that verification could eventually reach the high-90% range. Plans for a gov.uk wallet and verifiable credentials could extend government-issued proof into wider use without recreating a central database. However, political messaging disrupted this trajectory when the Prime Minister publicly framed “mandatory digital ID” around proving the right to work and live in the UK, activating an already “toxic” term in a sensationalist media context and amid electoral pressure from anti-immigration politics. The government reversed the mandatory element within three months and returned to service-access framing, but the episode risks leaving a more complex identity landscape than intended.
The talk closes by emphasizing a largely under-argued positive case: significant “ID poverty” and exclusion. Universal Credit users often struggle with cumbersome paper evidence and still fail to prove identity; 11 million people lack a valid passport or driving licence, the two main UK photo IDs, both expensive and document-dependent. Economic strain and digital realities—shared phones, library computers, no fixed address, low digital skills—mean common verification steps (like scanning a licence) are already difficult for many. A free, inclusive digital credential could materially improve access if designed for these constraints. The case also includes safety: identity-fraud reports are at record highs (linked largely to AI tools), and while digital identity can create new attack surface, verifiable credentials could reduce impersonation fraud in high-risk processes like loan applications if deployed well. Jaye’s core recommendation is organizational and political alignment: don’t let political announcements override a well-designed civil-service delivery plan that could achieve the desired benefits without triggering Britain’s entrenched fears.
- Britain used national identity cards for 13 years between 1939 and 1952.
- A 2002 consultation found most people supported an ID card, while far fewer supported a large central database holding everyone’s information.
- Government Gateway required a long random ID number that many people did not remember, and replacements could be issued.
- Verify achieved a reported verification rate of 48% in early February 2019 versus a 2015 projection of 90%.
- Verify’s performance triggered a National Audit Office investigation.
- OneLogin uses high-assurance verification methods including passport NFC scans.
- Plans were announced in 2025 for a gov.uk wallet linked to verifiable credentials.
- A Prime Ministerial announcement in September proposed mandatory digital ID tied to proving the right to work and live in the UK, and the mandatory element was reversed three months later.
- Universal Credit is described as the biggest government service in Europe and the UK’s main working-age benefit.
- 11 million people in the UK lack a valid passport or driving licence.
- “Britain has a unique, possibly globally unique, neurosis when it comes to digital identity.”
- “Any mention of it is guaranteed to bring waves of fuming, red-faced men forward.”
- “What is measurable is what gets measured, right?”
- “Brits quite like the idea of something that makes it easier for them to get government help when they need it.”
- “But they hate the idea of being monitored and surveilled, despite living in one of the most heavily surveilled countries on the planet.”
- “This thing often got described as an insecure key ring to which you could attach secure keys.”
- “So, in trying desperately to overcorrect from that Blair era central database, they somehow came up with this kind of… even-handed UI that tries to abdicate responsibility.”
- “The phrase digital ID, by itself, was already toxic in the UK by this point.”
- “There’s 11 million people in the UK right now without either a valid passport or a driving license.”
- “If you squint just right, the journey that we’ve been on looks a little bit like continuous improvement.”
- Keep political messaging aligned with the existing delivery plan so announcements don’t undermine workable technical programs.
- Lead with access-to-services benefits rather than surveillance-adjacent narratives that activate public distrust.
- Avoid creating or implying a single “big central database” that consolidates everyone’s information.
- Prioritize verification methods that are both high-assurance and practical, expanding routes over time to reach near-universal coverage.
- Design identity journeys around real-world constraints such as shared devices, no fixed address, and low digital skills.
- Provide a free or low-barrier digital credential to reduce ID poverty and improve inclusion for people lacking passports or driving licences.
- Reduce ecosystem complexity by coordinating government-issued credentials so they simplify rather than multiply user pathways.
- Communicate in concrete, user-need terms and avoid the loaded label “digital ID” when possible, given its cultural toxicity.
- Use verifiable credentials in high-risk flows like loan applications to shrink impersonation fraud.
- Treat continuous improvement as the operating model, learning from Blair-era centralization and Verify-era overcorrection without repeating either.
- Britain’s hostility to digital ID is best explained by history, media incentives, and political pressures—not just technology choices.
- Public support rises when identity tools are framed as help for accessing services, and collapses when framed as monitoring or coercion.
- Centralization fears and decentralization overcorrections can both break programs; usable responsibility and clear design matter.
- ID poverty is a major, practical problem: millions lack core photo ID and struggle with modern verification requirements.
- A well-designed, inclusive digital credential could improve access and safety, but success depends on disciplined messaging and governance.
All right, I'm Jaye, and I'm here to talk to you about why Britain hates digital ID. So, my credentials for telling you about this, other than being British as you can tell, start with this.
So, for nearly five years now, I've had the privilege of being the Chief Technology Officer of Vouchsafe, which is a digital identity company, naturally, that helps our customers replace legacy document checks with digital evidence and official data. This is a photo of me from right back at the start. Before Vouchsafe, I worked in and around government for a long time, both as a consultant and as a civil servant. I actually led the early design and development of our contact tracing app for the NHS during the pandemic.
Before that, I was actually a journalist, and the UK's media landscape is a foundational part of this story. So, I feel kind of uniquely qualified to draw on all three of these areas of life experience to talk to you about this topic.
So, the thing I would like to talk to you about today is why Britain is like that when it comes to digital ID. I am sure you know what I'm talking about. Britain has a unique, possibly globally unique, neurosis when it comes to digital identity. It is our national berserk button. Any mention of it is guaranteed to bring waves of fuming, red-faced men forward. The UK actually has quite a long and storied history with national ID and, more recently, digital ID.
My talk is about how we got like this, what the implications might be for similar projects happening around the world, and maybe how we might stop being like this. So, just to set the scene, this is a real message from my co-founder yesterday, and this is the magazine cover that she's talking about.
This book, Seeing Like a State, does anyone know this book? Oh, interesting. I recommend it if you don't. Seeing Like a State, it talks about historical attempts to improve the way people live and interact with their governments, and to make the state work more efficiently. That usually involves changing what is legible to the administrative apparatus of the state. What is measurable is what gets measured, right? The book talks about examples like the introduction of last names and censuses.
So, let me give you one example, just to make sure that we're all on the same page. If you're a medieval farmer, you understand your fields in terms of their use to you. This field can feed that many of this kind of animal, this one has a problem with a particular kind of pest, and so on. But from the state administrator's perspective, it's all about land area, which is measured in hectares, say. And that gives you a handy way to reason about things at a large scale, and compare apples with apples, but it obscures all the ways that those fields are actually different from each other.
And this is particularly relevant if you are, say, the British Empire. The British Empire once covered a quarter of the globe, over half a billion people at its peak, you all know this. And primarily for tax purposes, the empire wants to measure and record things about their subjects.
So, we find in our work that former or current imperial cores tend to be more comfortable with the idea of national identity than countries that have historically been colonial subjects. There's a distinction between viewing it as a means of control versus a means of protection. We actually found this through talking to investors who were from, say, South America. They just didn't get it, because the Anglo national psyche, when it comes to this stuff, is just so, so different from what you might find in, say, Chile.
Britain only did it during the two world wars, sorry, when our fear of control was outweighed by our fear of German spies. Here's an example of our old national identity cards that we used for 13 years between 1939 and 1952. And when Winston Churchill abolished them, he famously said that he was doing it to set the people free, which we will come back to.
So, if you fast forward to the 1990s, along comes Tony Blair, whose breed of new labour technocracy puts a very heavy emphasis on making the administrative apparatus of the state more efficient again. And he looks at all the disparate government services, all of them proving identity in their own separate ways, and he says, this needs one big database, one identifier, one smart card that you can use to get the government's help with something.
The language he uses at the time is quite clumsy to modern ears, but using the words that he has available, he essentially writes a whole new chapter of seeing like a state all by himself. And the project fails.
So, a consultation in 2002 found that the majority were actually in favour of the card itself, but a far, far smaller number favoured the idea of a big central database that keeps everyone's information. So, this is an important finding, right? Brits quite like the idea of something that makes it easier for them to get government help when they need it. Access to services, in other words. But they hate the idea of being monitored and surveilled, despite living in one of the most heavily surveilled countries on the planet.
So, this is all happening against a background of increasingly frenzied journalism on the topic, driven by a few unfortunately timed government data breaches. And if you read the journalism and commentary of the time, as I have done, you get a distinct flavour of, this is what we do to people. How dare you try and do this to us?
So, in the early 2000s, as digital government is struggling to be born, we have a system where every one of those services is reproving identity from scratch, using its own internal rulebook. Until one of the bigger departments, HMRC, the tax collectors again, take it upon themselves to push for Government Gateway, which was the first proper attempt to put shared authentication, if not yet verification, around digital government services in a centralised way.
Now, there were very, very serious problems with this, not least that you needed a random long ID number that no one ever remembered. And if you said, I don't remember it, it was just like, no problem, here's another one. The actual verification is still completely outsourced to the downstream services.
So, this thing often got described as an insecure key ring to which you could attach secure keys. And eventually, as the majority of people start interacting digitally with government, at least some of the time, they decide that they want to have another go at the verification problem. And this time, it's all driven by user needs that were in vogue at the time, you'll remember, and desperate not to repeat the problems of the Blair era.
And so, they call it Verify. And Verify again failed. Despite some very lofty hopes, they managed to verify less than half of the people coming to it in a minor scandal that triggered a National Order Office investigation, which you can see the key finding of here. GDS reported a verification rate of 48% at the beginning of February 2019, against a 2015 projection of 90%, which is massive, absolutely massive. And if anyone here knows their UK law, you might know that 48% is also a magic number because it was also the remain vote in our EU referendum.
And again, it came down to a fundamental problem in how the system was designed. So, in trying desperately to overcorrect from that Blair era central database, they somehow came up with this kind of pludge, even-handed UI that tries to abdicate responsibility not just for the verification, but the choice of who will verify you. I remember finding this immensely, immensely confusing when I was trying to go through this as a punter about like five, ten years ago. It must have been ten years ago, can't be five.
And no, I did not get verified. So, what we have here is not so much a self-sovereign identity system, but more of a self-hating verification system, if you like. And that brings us nearly to the present day.
Now, now that so many government services and government service provision happens digitally, it is simply no longer feasible to do without Verify or something like it. So, Verify gets canned and almost immediately the OneLogin program is launched with a revamped mandate to replace it. And OneLogin actually has a much saner system design.
They started with the simple sort of high assurance methods that everyone here will know well, like passport NFC scans, and they onboard new relying parties on a much more realistic time frame, and they are carefully adding more verification routes all the time. And I personally believe that they will succeed in getting that verification rate up to the high 90s where it really needs to be, eventually. They've largely adopted the sector best practices now and have fixed the most glaring mistakes of the previous attempts at this.
So, one view of all of this is that we are looking at continuous improvement. Early attempts were wrong in really major ways, thrashing about this way and that, but as we iterate and arrive at something that's not perfect, sure, but it's much, much closer than what came before. And in 2025, they even announced plans for a gov.uk wallet, which would keep us in step with the EU and other countries around the world getting on the verifiable credentials bandwagon.
And it would essentially be a nice, simple, uncontroversial bolt-on to the existing OneLogin program, because it takes things that they've already proven, and they have an infrastructure for doing that, and giving you a credential that you could conceivably start taking elsewhere and using in the private sector and so on. So, from the perspective of me and my peers, it looks like they've finally done it, right?
They're on track for a much better verification rate, with pretty good adoption numbers, mostly compliant with these emerging international standards, and most importantly, without any fuss about any big central database. All the benefits of national ID, but without the national ID. But then this happened.
So, in September, the Prime Minister went on TV and said, we're going to have digital ID, it's going to be mandatory, and it's so that you can prove that you're allowed to work and live here. So, the phrase digital ID, by itself, was already toxic in the UK by this point, after nearly two years of all of us just sitting on our arses, looking at Facebook, scaring ourselves silly with talk of 15-minute cities and Davos elites.
But if you're an alien, and for some reason you decided to land in the UK and look around for a bit, this might initially make some sort of sense, because you think, well, why would he do this? Why would he go against so much emerging best practice for how you talk about this stuff and sell it to people? Our newspapers look like this every day, even the good ones. These days, it's all on Facebook and even worse corners of the internet, with much less disguised language.
So, if this is your media diet for decades on end, and then you're stuck inside for two years, scrolling through nothing but this, wouldn't you like the idea of some way to keep tabs on the nefarious immigrants, weren't the thinking? And our centrist government is under threat. They have a massive majority of MPs since the most recent general election, but many of those MPs are hanging on by a thread.
So, the entire political spectrum in the UK is increasingly dissatisfied with the two major centrist parties, but the party that the media focuses on is Reform, the right-wing party, the far-right party, who, among other things, are massive immigration haters, to put it lightly. So, if you're a Labour Party functionary and your objective is to beat Reform at their own game, maybe it would make momentary sense to do this.
But, obviously, it did not work out that way. This botched launch made all the wrong moves and the government backpedalled on the mandatory part only three months later.
So, they now talk about this, it's still happening, but they only talk about it in relation to access to services, which, in my opinion, is a lesson learned because, as you will recall from Blair, that is always when it polls strongest. And the rehabilitation of that announcement, which was needed to make it fit in with the existing, much more technocratic, one-login plans and the existing private sector, has left us with an unusually complex digital identity landscape.
It looks like we're going to have a range of increasingly popular but non-mandatory government-issued credentials, and there's a real risk that we end up creating more complexity where we intended to reduce it. But I would say that I personally feel, on the whole, positive about where we're at now. That's partly because, despite all the noise, the one-login program backing all of this is still trundling along basically fine, and it continues to slowly, steadily improve. And I also believe that there is a much stronger positive case for digital ID that isn't yet being made in the UK.
This is Chloe, my co-founder. Chloe used to lead user research for Universal Credit, which is the biggest government service in Europe, and it is our main working-age benefit. While she was doing that job, she would see people struggling to prove who they are every single day, bringing in these big binders of old tatty birth certificates and other paperwork, and often still going away empty-handed. And that's a problem because there's 11 million people in the UK right now without either a valid passport or a driving license, and those are the main two forms of photo ID that we have.
They both cost a ridiculous amount of money, you need other documents to get them, and even having them isn't a guarantee that you'll be able to get verified easily. Because the cost of living crisis, rising energy bills, rising groceries, and so on, has left Brits sharing phones, relying on shared library computers, without fixed addresses, and with poor digital skills that mean scan your driving license is already quite a tall order. These are all situations that today's identity systems are rarely designed for.
The prospect of a free digital credential that everyone could use could, implemented correctly, be a real game changer for access and inclusion. And of course there's an identity fraud angle as well. So the fraud prevention group CIFAS is currently seeing record high reports of identity fraud, largely due to AI tools, and digital identity documents may present more of a surface area for fraudsters to attack, but they also provide more opportunities to defend as well.
So we think, we see, that firms moving toward using verifiable credentials for things like loan applications, there's a really big opportunity to drastically shrink the impersonation fraud that's rife right now. And we know that Brits care about being kept safe, just as they care about access to services, if it's presented in the right way. So what do I want to leave you with? The UK's outsized reaction to digital ID makes far more sense if you take the febrile media diet history and political landscape into account.
There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious, but if you squint just right, the journey that we've been on looks a little bit like continuous improvement, and despite all the distractions, there is a genuine issue with ID poverty in the UK, as there is in many countries around the world, especially Anglosphere countries. So if you want to learn more about any of this, we did publish this detailed guide, Digital ID in the UK, earlier in the year. I have like five copies with me if anyone wants them, but there's also a free copy on our website. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
Interesting perspective. Any questions from the audience?
Okay, I have a question actually. If you had one recommendation that you could give the UK government to make this project a success, what would that be? I got the feeling, as did many others, that what happened was the political wing of the government, the British government, wasn't talking to the civil servant wing of the government. So there was this absolutely perfect plan in progress, and then a bunch of toddlers came and kicked it to pieces, and now they're trying to reconcile.
So the plan that was already in progress could have delivered all the benefits that the government, with their big mandatory announcement, was trying to deliver, so I think that's where I would start. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.
