This exercise in shrinking the electorate to Conservative advantage must not be the new normal. Labour, in office, should scrap it
Unlike Boris Johnson, did you remember to take ID when you went to vote yesterday? Did you remember to take the right kind? Or, like one in seven Britons, did you have no idea you needed ID to vote? Or, like at least 2 million Britons, did you have no acceptable voter ID at all?
Until last year, when the 2022 Elections Act came into effect, British elections were free of these questions. For centuries, despite the slow, sometimes hugely contentious expansion of the electorate, and the acrimonious and distrustful character of our politics, voters were not required to produce documents in polling stations to prove who they were. This country did not believe in identity cards, many of our politicians proudly told us – particularly Tories. As the then shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, put it in 2009, shortly before his party returned to power: “ID cards … are both an affront to British liberty and will have no place in a Conservative Britain. They are also a huge waste of money.”
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
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