Andy Burnham hasn’t even moved the last of his boxes into Downing Street, and he’s already making enemies in Silicon Valley.
The incoming Prime Minister’s first major policy pledge is to quietly shelve the digital ID programme that his predecessor had been nudging toward for the better part of two years. A spokesperson confirmed the decision on Monday, saying the new Government would “put its focus where people need it right now”, which is about as clear a signal as you’re going to get that flashy tech projects are going to the back of the queue.
It’s a telling choice. Digital ID had its fans, particularly among tech firms and a certain stripe of policy wonk who saw it as a route to streamlining public services. But it also had a vocal and deeply suspicious opposition, with civil liberties groups warning for months that the scheme would hand the state an uncomfortable level of access to citizens’ daily lives.
For Burnham, though, the calculation appears simpler than any of that. With inflation still biting at household budgets and energy bills refusing to behave themselves, spending political capital on a digital ID rollout would have been a tough sell on any doorstep in the country.
The focus, his team says, will shift to cost of living measures. The specifics are still thin on the ground, but the direction of travel is clear. Burnham built his political brand in Greater Manchester on practical, unglamorous interventions: housing, transport, rough sleeping. Expect more of the same at a national level.
“Put its focus where people need it right now” is doing a lot of work as a phrase. It suggests a government that knows it can’t do everything at once, and has chosen to lead with economic pain rather than digital ambition.
Whether scrapping digital ID is a principled stand or simply a way to bank goodwill before delivering difficult news elsewhere remains to be seen. Critics on the right will call it populism; supporters will call it priorities.
The real question is what the cost of living package actually looks like when Burnham gets to his feet in the Commons, and whether it’s bold enough to match the expectations his early moves are setting.
