By Editor,Stephen Daisley

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It is sometimes said that ‘unAmerican’ is a word which does not translate to this side of the Pond.

America was founded on an idea — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — against which the actions and philosophies of today can be judged.

Britain, on the other hand, is a creation of history, and so it makes no sense to call a politician or policy ‘unBritish’. Our hodge-podge constitution is concerned with government in the here and now rather than obedience to prescriptive ideals.

I’m afraid I think this is so much hogwash.

Of course there is such a thing as ‘unBritish’. Keir Starmer’s digital ID plans are the definition of unBritish.

(Contrary to initial suggestions, the scheme will not be called ‘Brit Card’, a relief to those who take more umbrage at the name than the infringement of liberties.

Whether you identify as British, Scottish, Irish or Wiccan Jedi, your privacy will be taking a thumping all the same.)

The government says this mandatory scheme ‘will help combat illegal working while making it easier for the vast majority of people to use vital government services’.

Well, who could be against that?

This is how the state always talks when it has designs on your liberties. Ministers speak as though they’re doing you a good turn, making life more straight-forward. Nothing to worry about. All for your own good. Trust us.

Any government that says it can only improve things by requiring you to install identity-tracking technology on your phone has forfeited the right to ask for your trust. It plainly doesn’t trust you and you should return the favour.

In his “Oxford History of England”, AJP Taylor recorded that, prior to the Great War, ‘a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman’.

Such a man ‘had not official number or identity card’, and what was true of the King’s subjects was true even of a foreigner, who ‘could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police’.

Taylor’s account is loved by lovers of liberty and often quoted against an ascendant threat to the freedom of the individual. And while it is a romanticised version of the past, there is an essential truth captured amid its spires-and-shires idealism. By the Victorian era, England — and, broadly speaking, Britain — was a high-trust society in which liberty was cherished, order upheld lightly, and a person’s private affairs generally untrespassed upon by the state.

Oh, Stephen. That’s old-fashioned, fuddy-duddy stuff. The world has moved on.

Good for the world, but I haven’t. I still believe in the Taylorian Britain of liberty, trust and privacy, and if those arrangements have become unsustainable, it is for those who govern us to explain why. I doubt it’s a conversation they will wish to have.

But no one will be asked to produce their ID except to prove their right to work.

Of course not. The government is going to the trouble of setting up a digital identity scheme for 69 million people, with all the time, bureaucracy and costs that will involve, just to verify migrant work visas.

You needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to see how such a programme could undergo mission creep and become in effect an ID card.

Come now. As the government says, this will ‘make it simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare, while streamlining access to tax records’. Surely everyone would welcome that?

It sounds very appealing, but a few thoughts occur.

The more that access to services depends on digital IDs, the greater the disruption will surely be whenever the technology falters.

Plus, any scheme which collates so much of your information in one place seems likely to become a target for hackers. Again, government tech isn’t exactly known for its robust design. Remember the Covid apps.

Well, if it stops illegal immigration, it’s worth it.

Let’s get to that, for that’s what this is all about. Not Big Brother plotting to control us or manipulate our data or any other fanciful notions. It’s about immigration and the failure of successive governments to control it.

And because of that, we will all be made to go around with an app on our phones that, wifi and glitches permitting, will confirm whether we belong here or not. Your history and heritage, your citizenship and contribution to the country — these will no longer be authoritative in defining your nationality. An app will be the arbiter.

The government cites similar schemes in Australia and Denmark as proof that digital IDs work and are nothing to fear.

Ministers have, inadvertently, stumbled onto a good point. We should look to these countries and learn from their policies.

Instead of adopting Australia’s ID policy, let’s adopt their illegal immigration policy. Introduced by Tony Abbott’s government in 2013, Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB) was the Commonwealth’s response to the boats crisis, which at its height saw more than 20,000 illegal migrants enter Australia by sea in the space of a year.

Keir Starmer would have your arm off for such a low number, but Australians believe in their country and reckon its borders should be enforced, so this was a big deal for them.

OSB deployed the Royal Australian Navy to intercept unauthorised vessels and turn them back before they could reach Australia.

Those migrants who did make it ashore were transferred by the Australian Border Force to offshore detention.

Critics called it cruel, inhumane, and mean-spirited. What they didn’t call it was ineffective: in the space of 12 months, the number of illegal migrants arriving in Australia fell by 98 per cent.

The Tories attempted a watered-down version of this with the Rwanda plan, which was struck down by the courts. Rightly so, for ministers knew the plan would be ruled incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Rather than tackle this head on by legislating to disapply the Convention in this area — or withdrawing from it altogether — the previous government preferred to con the public into thinking ministers had sincerely tried to stop the boats but were stopped by Big, Bad Activist Judges.

Instead of Denmark’s ID programme, why not copy their immigration programme? When the European migration crisis brought an influx of outsiders, many from the Middle East and North Africa who spoke little or no Danish, even the liberal, enlightened Danes had enough.

They felt migrants were putting a strain on public services, their famously generous welfare state, and multicultural harmony.

So the voters booted out the centre-right government that had presided over this mess and installed the left-wing Social Democrats.

Sounds topsy-turvy, doesn’t it? But Mette Frederiksen, who has been prime minister for six years now, isn’t your average lefty.

She’s a sort of socialist Margaret Thatcher — a deeply unsettling concept — and has pursued a high tax, big spending agenda while cracking down on both legal and illegal immigration.

Deterrent measures include denying refugees permanent status, restricting asylum seekers’ ability to bring family members to Denmark, and making migrants work for benefits or if they fail to learn Danish.

Her fellow left-wingers have accused Frederiksen of lurching to the far right, but her policies are popular with the public and asylum applications are at a 40-year low.

Neither of these approaches is likely to be adopted by either front bench in the UK. The Tories promised to cut migration then drove it up to levels never before seen in Britain.

Labour is so unwilling to confronting illegal immigration head-on that it would rather impose a digital ‘papers please’ policy on the entire country. Liberty, privacy, and British history be damned.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the red elite or the blue elite, the political class is ideologically opposed to enforcing Britain’s borders.

They will sacrifice anything, cast aside centuries of custom and convention, change the very relationship between the citizen and the state, rather than stop tens of thousands breaking into the UK every year.

Their ID scheme is unBritish because they do not believe in Britain.