Burnham backlash: UK Digital ID plans in peril if Manchester mayor succeeds Starmer

Summary

Public Sector Burnham backlash: UK Digital ID plans in peril if Manchester mayor succeeds Starmer He'll have to beat Nigel Farage in a Brexit-backing constituency first, though The government’s plans to introduce digital ID could be put in doubt if Andy Burnham, who spoke out against the scheme last September, replaces Keir Starmer as the UK prime minister.The Greater Manchester mayor told a session at the UK's Labour party conference in Manchester last autumn that he opposed digital ID given the problems the previous Labour government he had served in had experienced with ID cards. “I think there’s a risk of an opportunity cost situation here, where something can consume a huge amount of time and actually doesn’t come through,” he said. “And that will be the lesson about 2005 to 2010 Parliament; it consumed a lot of air time and it didn’t actually materialize.” ID cards did actually materialize – with 13,200 produced before the scheme was scrapped. In fact, the Home Office used Manchester as a testing ground for the scheme. Burnham helped to sell it when he was a Home Office minister in 2005-6, telling the BBC that compulsory national ID cards would be “a major breakthrough” in tackling identity fraud. On 19 May 2026 Burnham was selected by Labour to fight the Parliamentary seat of Makerfield in a by-election in June. It would be a surprise if the party had not chosen him, given the former MP Josh Simons stood down to provide Burnham with the chance of returning to Parliament and then challenging Starmer as Labour leader and UK prime minister.Until February, Simons was the minister responsible for Starmer’s digital ID plans. He resigned after his decision to commission a probe into journalists who had written critical articles about the think tank he ran, Labour Together. Andy Burnham outside during a rally in Manchester Pic credit: R Heilig/Shutterstock To return to Westminster, Burnham will have to win a by-election in a constituency where Nigel Farage’s Reform p...