When I say “resist digital ID” I don’t mean just fight the headline “BritCard” — that could be a deliberate distraction. Digital ID is already here in practice: One Login has been live since 2021, the GOV.UK Wallet is the next layer, and the BritCard was only ever one possible face of a much larger stack. 

Don’t be fooled (and certainly do not celebrate too soon) if ministers scrap a branded BritCard scheme; the machine has been whirring for years. Here we push back against every form of digital verification and consolidation of identity: it starts with One Login, because once that gate exists the rest follows.

They tell you it’s a convenience: a single sign-in, a digital “wallet” on your phone, a quicker way to do the paperwork. Don’t believe the marketing. Under the shiny surface sits a single key — One Login — and that key is already being shaped into the gate through which the state, banks and corporations will decide who can work, who can claim benefits, who can buy or sell property, and who can access their own money. The Wallet is not a harmless app; it is a container for state-issued tokens. When those tokens become the accepted proof for taxes, benefits, mortgages, business registration and everyday services, an app on your phone becomes the registry of your life.

This did not start with a headline bill or a flashy “BritCard” announcement. The mission creep began quietly in code and procurement: single sign-on, shared standards, “assurance” frameworks and quietly adopted verification pathways. The paperwork, the APIs (Application Programming Interface: the set of rules and doors that lets one piece of software talk to another) and the contracts are the scaffolding. Companies House demanding GOV.UK verification, public bodies wiring in One Login, and a Wallet that holds driving licences and official credentials — stitch those pieces together and you have infrastructure, not an optional gadget. Infrastructure is hard to rip up; it normalises itself into the routine until the “optional” becomes the only way to function.

Imagine the consequence: your status becomes machine-readable. Miss a check-in, a payment, an automated deadline — and the code can close a door for you before a human ever sees the file. Geofences grant or deny movement. Scores, flags and “trusted” badges route you into fast lanes or slow lanes. The convenience of a single credential is also the convenience of control: once the signals flow through the same channels, they can be stitched together to observe, rank and restrict at scale. The architecture is not neutral: it privileges whoever built the stack — the agencies, foundations, finance and platform firms that write the standards and sell the implementations.

Don’t fool yourself that this is merely a fight over a branded card. The BritCard may well be theatre. The real play is a quiet remaking of civic life into machine logic: identity as a service, governed by APIs, enforced by contracts, and governed in practice by private stacks that governments adopt because they are cheap to buy and simple to measure. 

Westminster may perform the debate, but the script is drafted in globalists boardrooms, international bodies and procurement frameworks. The public petitioning and parliamentary grandstanding are visible gestures while the rails are bolted down in the background.

This is the moment when the shape of everyday liberty is being decided in code and contracts. The infrastructure exists; the choice is whether we let the single key become the unquestioned default. 

Read the documents, follow the links, show the receipts, and make the architecture visible to everyone you can. If you care about keeping any space of life beyond machine rule, the argument starts here: One Login, GOV UK wallet = one key, and the consequences if we hand them the gate.