Identity cards are now back in vogue – they are the political idea that never went away

Boris Johnson once opposed the idea, arguing they would give the state too much power, but now it's different, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson was always against ID cards – but seemingly no longer (EPA)

You’ve got to laugh sometimes. One by one, the eternal verities of Blairism reassert themselves. Everything the New Labour government did that prompted howls of rage from its opponents has been quietly brought back in the years since.

My favourites so far have been Nick Clegg’s conversion to the idea that taxpayer-funded political advisers were actually essential to the functioning of democracy, not a contradiction of it; David Cameron’s reinvention of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit as the Implementation Unit; and now the return of digital ID cards.

“I think it’s bonkers,” David Davis told the BBC. He felt so strongly about the subject in 2008 that he resigned as shadow home secretary to fight a by-election in his own seat against the shadow of sinister forces who wanted to put us all on a state database. As he said, the first thing the Conservative-led government did in 2010 was to cancel the identity card scheme.