Month: November 2025

SDP CONDEMNS PLANS FOR DIGITAL ID SYSTEM

The budget again confirmed the Labour Governments plan to introduce a Digital ID system, at a staggering provisionally forecast cost of £1.8billion.  Below is the SDP Press Release from September which sums up many of the condemnations of these plans.

“Existing “right to work” checks are more than sufficient to stop the employment of illegal aliens. The government should instead crackdown on black market and gig economy firms”

William Clouston, SDP Leader: 

“The SDP is the party of the patriotic state. We accept that sometimes individual liberties must be balanced against collective goods. But what collective good does digital ID solve? It does not solve the challenge of illegal migration – which is a problem only due to weak elites that refuse to use the tools they already have. 

“Instead, I believe this new digital ID scheme is a desperate move by a teetering government to keep key backers of the Starmer government on-side. Big tech firms, and the sinister interest groups that have benefitted from their largesse, are turning the screws to force an expensive, insecure, and pointless digital ID system on the public while the political opportunity still remains. It must be rejected.”

London (26 September 2025) – The Social Democratic Party (SDP), Britain’s party of the patriotic state, opposes the government’s planned digital ID system – on four main grounds.

First, the SDP rejects the claim that such a system is necessary to reduce illegal migration. Existing “right to work” checks are more than sufficient to stop the employment of illegal aliens. The government should instead crackdown on black market and gig economy firms that fail to enforce existing right to work checks. Such a crackdown, paired with the detention and deportation of all illegal arrivals into Britain, would end the crisis of illegal migration.

Secondly, rather than being in the interests of the British people, the planned digital ID system exists to further the interests of multinational technology firms. The main domestic champion of digital ID, the Tony Blair Institute, has received several millions of pounds in donations since 2021 from Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle. Oracle may be a vendor for much of the enterprise database software that will underpin the government’s digital ID system.

“the system’s implementation will represent a wealth transfer in the order of tens of billions of pounds from the British people to Silicon Valley software firms”

Thirdly, the new digital ID system represents a blatant attempt at state capture by big tech. As constituted, the system’s implementation will represent a wealth transfer in the order of tens of billions of pounds from the British people to Silicon Valley software firms and contractors. The digital ID system will also grant big tech unprecedented access to vast amounts of data on the British public, allowing significant opportunities for profit at our collective expense.

Finally, the planned digital ID system is a security risk of unprecedented proportions. One Login, the existing system which will underpin the digital ID scheme, is riddled with fundamental security flaws. Many of the contractors for One Login have not undergone basic security vetting, with much of the development having been outsourced to Romania. Internal simulations of a cyberattack have shown that One Login can be commandeered by external actors to produce fake IDs, shut down the system nation-wide, and steal the IDs of millions of British citizens. 

“The digital ID system will also grant big tech unprecedented access to vast amounts of data on the British public”

You can learn more about the Libertarian party at https://sdp.org.uk/.

Originally posted at https://sdp.org.uk/2025/09/26/sdp-condemns-plans-for-digital-id-system/

Image from Grok.

A slap in the face for working people – Budget 2025

The Libertarian Party UK published the note below following the budget.

“the budget ensures rising wages and inflation push more people into higher tax brackets without the need for an explicit rate rise. This is effectively a hidden tax increase”

Well, what a slap in the face for working people yesterday, as Rachel Reeves unveiled the heftiest tax rises in decades. A quick run-down of some of the LPUK NCC’s response to the budget announcement:

For London and South East co-ordinator Marco Bocci, Reeves’ claim that “We beat the forecasts and we will beat them again” is “the best phrase of the budget yet. She should do stand up comedy, Rachel from accounts.”

Let’s pick apart some of the main points:

𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵-𝘁𝗮𝘅𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝘇𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝘀

By freezing income-tax and National Insurance thresholds until 2031, the budget ensures rising wages and inflation push more people into higher tax brackets without the need for an explicit rate rise. This is effectively a hidden tax increase, subverting transparency and voter consent.

𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗮𝘅 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗱𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁, 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆

Raising taxes on dividend income, property and investment returns (plus a “mansion tax” on high-value homes) deters capital formation, penalises asset ownership and discourages saving. This amounts to state appropriation of individuals’ legitimately earned returns.

“taxing a previously legal and popular method of efficient retirement saving. This closes off a voluntary, private route to long-term financial security”

£𝟮,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗮𝗽 𝗼𝗻 𝗡𝗜-𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀

Anything above that limit will now attract full employee and employer NI, effectively taxing a previously legal and popular method of efficient retirement saving. This closes off a voluntary, private route to long-term financial security, raises the cost of saving, and pushes individuals towards greater reliance on state-approved pension structures rather than personal choice.

𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗳𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴

The abolition of the two-child benefit cap and increased welfare, while framed as support for “vulnerable families,” expands the size and scope of the welfare state. This redistributive spending infringes on property rights and encourages dependency on the state.

𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗺 𝘄𝗮𝗴𝗲

Raising the over-21 rate to £12.71 an hour from April 2026 will only put more pressure on already struggling employers to increase wages for others, and is a de-facto endorsement of rising unemployment. The resulting inflationary pressure will only further deepen the cost of living crisis.

For Chairman Andrew Withers, “The overall picture is sucking £26bn out of the productive economy to prop up a dying Welfare State all in the name of ‘fairness.’ The main beneficiaries will not be children in poverty, but the employment of tens of thousands of middle class bureaucrats working in quangos.”

“The overall picture is sucking £26bn out of the productive economy to prop up a dying Welfare State”

Mercia co-ordinator Martin Day congratulates Reeves on “hammering the poor hardest in an effort to balance the books. Government spending MUST be cut.”

Though a separate issue, party leader Alex Zychowski notes that “yesterday – the day before the budget – Labour signalled their intention to abolish trial by jury – an insidious attempt to use the assault on our paychecks to take the light off this egregious assault on our ancient freedoms.”

More on that in the coming days, but to close our analysis, a simple but accurate summary from Northern co-ordinator Dan Clarke: “this budget is a disgrace.”

“hammering the poor hardest in an effort to balance the books. Government spending MUST be cut.”

You can learn more about the Libertarian party at https://libertarianpartyuk.com/.

Originally posted on 26th November at https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Cw2x799jL/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Image from Grok.

Surveillance State – Live Facial Recognition

” the idea that mass scanning of faces in public should become routine ought to alarm anyone who values freedom over convenience”

The Metropolitan Police are proposing a major expansion of live facial-recognition surveillance across London, claiming success after nearly a thousand arrests linked to the technology. Their public consultation, proudly cited by the force, apparently found that 85% of respondents support the use of facial recognition to catch serious criminals.

On the surface, it sounds persuasive – a high-tech answer to crime. But the idea that mass scanning of faces in public should become routine ought to alarm anyone who values freedom over convenience. Let’s not forget that it is little coincidence that facial recognition is being rolled out in tandem with digital ID – the two systems will surely be linked, meaning walking down the high street to get a pint of milk becomes the equivalent of walking through passport control.

In a free society, the presumption of innocence is not negotiable. Yet facial-recognition systems function by presuming the opposite: that everyone passing a camera deserves to be checked against a criminal database. The innocent are monitored not because of what they’ve done, but because they exist in public. That logic turns civic life into a police line-up and erodes one of the oldest protections in liberal civilisation – that the citizen need not justify their innocence to The State.

“In a free society, the presumption of innocence is not negotiable. Yet facial-recognition systems function by presuming the opposite”

Proponents point to reassuring statistics: the Metropolitan Police claim a false-match rate of just 0.0003 % from millions of scans. But even such a tiny error, multiplied across a city of millions, produces hundreds of wrongful alerts and unjustified interventions. More troubling still, eight in ten false matches involved black individuals, underscoring that algorithmic bias is not a theoretical risk but a measurable injustice. To shrug off these flaws because the “majority supports the policy” is to forget that liberty is not subject to opinion polls.

Beyond the technical debates lies a deeper constitutional one: who authorises this surveillance, and who restrains its use once normalised? There was no vote in parliament, no consultation when 46 million of our passport photos were uploaded to a database under the last Conservative government. Without strict legal boundaries and independent oversight, any promise of restraint will vanish under the pressure of convenience. History shows that powers granted to police in the name of safety are rarely surrendered voluntarily.

“who authorises this surveillance, and who restrains its use once normalised?”

The state’s duty to protect citizens does not extend to treating every citizen as a potential suspect. For libertarians, that principle defines the moral boundary of government. A society that trades privacy for marginal gains in policing may find that it loses both — liberty first, and trust soon after.

In the end, the expansion of facial-recognition surveillance is not progress – it is the dismantling of the presumption of innocence, one scan at a time.

Alex Zychowski – Libertarian Party UK

You can learn more about the Libertarian party at https://libertarianpartyuk.com/, follow Alex on X/ Twitter @alexzychowski or email him at alex.zychowski@libertarianpartyuk.com.

Originally posted on 4th November at https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17cc8Hmbye/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Main image from Grok.