Pete W drew my attention to this Grauniad article with the bare facts. The Register offers some discussion.
It's certainly occurred to The Register that the imposition of compulsory biometric registration would create a favourable climate for wide-scale revolt; people will tend to evade because they can't be bothered or because they actively don't want to be tagged, so a large lumpenrevolt would make it difficult to isolate and pick off smaller quantities of liberal refuseniks. [John Lettice]
That's the positive side to it. Elsewhere in the article the notion is raised again that if Blunkett is diverted from his zeal for a straightforward ID card then slow convergence among the various current IDs would allow ID cards to be introduced later by stealth.
As for the idea that Straw and Blunkett are possible successors to Blair? A nauseating idea that I had successfully suppressed until now.
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