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© Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Johnson seeks to bolster economy as Queen Elizabeth opens new parliament session
By DANICA KIRKA LONDON©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
26 Comments
Alfie Noakes
This is an attempt at voter suppression in a US Republican style. There is virtually no voter fraud in the UK (one case in 2019) so this is simply an attempt to disenfranchise an estimated 2m people whose ID photo is unclear, led by a man who once claimed he was so against ID cards that he'd eat his own if forced to carry one:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3613116/Ask-to-see-my-ID-card-and-Ill-eat-it.html
Criticized by authoritarian Tories terrified of the right to protest shown by Extinction Rebellion and BLM last year, that is. The Tories make grandiose claims about being the freedom party but they're totally anti-democratic and anti-civil liberties. The UK is losing freedoms it's taken hundreds of years to earn while the economy sinks like a stone.
Desert Tortoise
Lacking a formal bill of rights that restricts what the government can do, UK has long had a bit of an authoritarian streak. In the UK one's rights are whatever the Parliament of the time allows. There are no overarching restrictions on the powers of government.
Jimizo
Some northern seats went Tory to get Brexit through. Couldn’t help but notice the condescension when he talked about them voting Tory.
He’ll consolidate his southern/rural base.
Ascissor
He might find the southern Blue Wall a little weakened though.
Pukey2
Alfie Noakes:
Wasn't the flip-flopping hypocrite Boris Johnson so opposed to voter ID before? This buffoon cannot be trusted with anything.
Quote:
"If I am ever asked,” Boris Johnson once wrote of ID cards, “on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it.”
mrtinjp
There is virtually no voter fraud in the UK (one case in 2019) so this is simply an attempt to disenfranchise an estimated 2m people whose ID photo is unclear,
If there is no voter fraud than there should be no issue with the voterID, and why these 2m do not have a clear photoID, would this be a reference to the illegal immigrants..
mrtinjp
When the queen begins, "my government"
Good point
Ravey Davey Gravy
People here are getting confused between a national identity card and photo ID (passport etc). They're two very different things and speaking as a UK voter I'm always quite shocked at how easy it is to turn up at a polling station and cast a vote with minimal identity checks. This legislation is well overdue.
@Alfie Noakes - Why don't you ask the people of Canning Town how they feel about XR? Or any normal Londoners who were held to ransom by a bunch of poshos playing revolutionary.
@Jimizo - If you think Tories are condescending wait until you hear about the other lot. There's a reason no one votes Labour anymore.
nandakandamanda
They are 'her' people, so the government that they have voted for becomes 'her' government, whatever its political lean. At least, I think that is the tradition.
Mickelicious
British lovers of civil liberties take note:
10 Belfast Catholics (including a priest, a serving British soldier home on leave, and a disabled WW2 veteran) shot dead by paratroopers in the 1971 Ballymurphy Massacre, have had their names cleared, a whole 23 years after the Good Friday Agreement.
Innocent UK civilians murdered by UK troops on UK streets, for 50 years they were condemned and dismissed as terrorists. Their killers however, will face no justice.
Rules, Britannia?
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-56986784
Jimizo
They do where I’m from. Admitting to voting Tory there is equivalent to admitting you got arrested for exposing yourself in a playground.
Pity my hometown is part of England. Wish we could tow it up the Irish Sea to Scotland.
Screw England and particularly the south of it.
Mickelicious
The Scouse That Roared
u_s__reamer
Voter fraud is so rare in the UK (and USA) and even if it were to succeed it would have such an infinitesimal impact on election results as compared to the rampant practice of gerrymandering and changing election laws by moving the goal posts to favor the ruling party, like this proposed new ID law which is a blatant copy-cat measure taken from the playbook of the corrupt GOP. This latest transparent Tory wheeze exposes a party bankrupt of ideas with no sense of fairness or morality and only interested in "taking back control" (from the people of Britain). The wheels of karma turn slowly, but these latest ant-democratic measures may backfire to bring the tent down on BoJo's clown show.
kurisupisu
Unlike Japan, where it is an offense for me not to carry ID at all times, in the UK it feels slightly liberating to walk to the shops with only a coin or two in my pocket...
Jimizo
A bit harsh. I have more sympathy for the toffs like Johnson, Cameron, Rees-Mogg and the rest of the privileged trash - you can’t expect them to act or know better. Inbreeding and being shut off from society at large will do that. Amoral nonsense.
It’s people from good, northern working class stock who’ve let us down.
Pukey2
So, will Japanese be arrested or hauled off to the police station if they don't have ID in the UK?
Toasted Heretic
Well said, Mickelicious & a disgrace that this important story wasn't covered today.
Ravey Davey Gravy
People like you are the reason people like them are flocking Labour in droves.
Toasted Heretic
I think he's being sarcastic?