"Brit card" will likely cost you your seat Dear Mr Zeichner,
A compulsory ID card, digital or otherwise, is a catastrophically bad idea for Labour. The British public have accepted such ID systems in time of war, but the illegal immigration and working problems are not a crisis on that scale, no matter how much the right-wing press tries to make it seem so.
By over-reacting in this way, Labour are handing the entire civil liberties agenda to the Tories and Reform (Reform? Civil liberties? What have we come to?). They are not really in favour of civil liberties, but they have a better idea of what the public will put up with than Labour is displaying.
In Cambridge, the Tories and Reform have no real hope of unseating you, but the Liberal Democrats and the Greens do, especially if they were to form an electoral pact against you. As a strongly Remain former Labour MP, finding another seat would be challenging, at best.
I urge you to oppose any form of compulsory ID in all ways possible. It makes Labour look even more authoritarian than the Tories and Reform.
I would also suggest that Labour needs to be far more sceptical about policy suggestions from the Tony Blair Institute. It isn't 1997 any more. but the TBI doesn't seem to have noticed and carries on campaigning for things Blair was unable to push through, because they were bad ideas for both New Labour and the United Kingdom.
Yours, sincerely,
John Dallman