Hurrah for Home Secretary Alan Johnson for some common sense in abandoning plans for compulsory ID cards (for British nationals at least).
The new voluntary approach could still go further: we could volunteer not to do it, and to rely on the biometric passports. Questions remain about the nature and safeguards on a national database.
AJ is being interviewed on the PM programme: there is an echo of the refreshingly and perhaps excessively candid comments of Tony McNulty about not overstating the benefits of ID cards at a Fabian event back in 2005.
Even before the spending squeeze was so tight, a convincing cost-benefit analysis had never been made.
It has been a slow and lingering death for the compulsory ID card. There may be a little further to go.
But its nearly all over.
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