There are now over 240 bills going through Republican controlled States in the USA to bring back Jim Crow by restricting the voting rights of any demographic that is unlikely to vote for them; preparing the ground for a Trump revival in the mid terms and 2024 Presidential election. These measures in “the best democracy money can buy” has has its counterpart in a proposal currently under consideration in the UK – and being trialed in Woking (1) a Tory controlled town hitherto mostly famous for its Pizza Express – to require presentation of photo i/d to be a condition of voting in any election from 2023. The next General Election is scheduled for 2024.

This is designed to exclude anyone that does not have photo i/d from the right to vote.

The two main forms of photo i/d in the UK are passports and car licenses. So, the determining factor in whether you have the right to vote or not will be whether or not you can afford to drive a car or take overseas holidays. 24% of potential voters do neither.

So this proposal would disenfranchise one in four of the electorate. The quarter with the least resources.

So, the worst off will be most disenfranchised. When you add ethnicity to this, it becomes even more poisonous. 24% of White people do not have a driving license, compared to 39% identifying as Asian and 47% of Black people. So, Black people are twice as likely to be excluded from the right to vote as White people. Younger people are also less likely to own cars – often for very positive reasons – as are people who live in cities. In Brent, for example, 42% of households have no access to a car or van. So, its clear who this measure is designed to shuffle off the register. A cursory look at opinion polls indicates why.

The Tories like to argue that “Democracy” is a “Fundamental British Value” (with capital letters) but this is the single biggest roll back of voting rights in British history. So not so much a fundamental value, more an expendable expedient. Something they’d put up with when it offered no threat. But, Corbynism gave them a scare in 2017. And – as post Brexit, less than global Britain shrinks into a mean and twisted cartoon of its worst features – they are still haunted by the ghost of it; knowing that the future is neither bright nor orange.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/01/woking-council-accused-of-discouraging-vulnerable-voters-postal-vote-id

2. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/09/warning-over-photo-id-law-change-for-uk-wide-and-english-elections