Manchester’s incoming prime minister has decided that the fastest way to fix the cost of living crisis is to delete all the infrastructure that makes government services faster. The digital ID system—which, yes, had problems—is getting binned in favor of what a spokesperson calls “putting focus where people need it right now.” That focus, apparently, is queuing.
The math here is pristine. Citizens were complaining about energy bills and rent. The government’s solution: make them physically travel to a post office to prove they exist. This is what “listening to the people” looks like when you’ve confused austerity with authenticity.
Nobody actually said they wanted digital ID scrapped. They said they wanted cheaper heating. But scrapping digital infrastructure costs nothing—literally, it saves money—while fixing housing and energy requires actual spending. So here we are. The incoming administration has found the one policy that simultaneously appeals to both Luddites and budget hawks: bureaucratic regression dressed as populism.
The real genius is the waiting list. Post offices have been systematically defunded for a decade. Adding a mandatory identity-verification queue to a system already drowning in footfall isn’t policy—it’s performance art about how government abandons its own citizens. A pensioner needing to update their address will now spend four hours for what used to take ninety seconds online. This is progress, apparently, because it’s inefficient in a way that feels traditional.