Will Boris Johnson’s voter ID plans really mean more votes for the Conservatives?

Critics suggest the plans represent an attempt to effectively to disenfranchise the poor and ethnic minorities who might otherwise tend to vote Labour. Given recent voting patterns, however, these old assumptions may not ring true, writes Sean O’Grady

Increasing his lead: an idea the prime minister was, once upon a time, bitterly opposed to is now being wheeled out for the benefit of his future job prospects (AFP/Getty)

If there is one measure in the Queen’s Speech that appears to be a more or less naked attempt at suppression of the Labour vote, it is the proposal for compulsory voter ID at polling stations. The many critics of the idea, again mostly on the opposition benches, argue it is as unnecessary as it is undemocratic. They note that in recent years there has been only one conviction for this particular type of election fraud, “personation”, as impersonation is known in this context. The Electoral Commission noted with some satisfaction in a 2014 review that there is “no evidence to suggest that there have been widespread, systematic attempts to undermine or interfere with recent elections through electoral fraud”. 

In the course of their discussions with election officials in town halls, the police and others, the Electoral Commission concluded this: “Electoral fraud is not widespread, and reports of specific fraud are focused on specific places in England in a few local authority areas”. Even in those cases, the type of fraud tended to be “harvesting” of postal votes by campaigners, rather than the very rare examples of personation. Outside Northern Ireland, where the old slogan was “vote early, vote often”, personation has never been an issue in UK elections. The problem of dishonesty, one might add, is more likely to lie with those who get elected rather than the electorate, given what we know about the MPs’ expenses scandal and various instances of hypocrisy and worse perpetrated by serving ministers.

It would appear to be a quite blatant attempt effectively to disenfranchise the poor and ethnic minorities who might otherwise tend to vote Labour, and thus deliver an undeserved marginal electoral advantage to Conservatives. Note too that, in the December 2019 Tory manifesto there was a commitment to broaden the franchise among ex-pats, people who don’t even live in Britain, and are much more likely to vote Tory. After all, the poor with “chaotic” lives are less likely to hold photo ID or know where it is, just as, in the old days, they were less likely to own a car and turn out to vote on wet and windy evenings.

Read on, though, through that 2014 report, and you discover that the Electoral Commission, supposedly a nest of Remoaning anti-Tories, supports the idea of photographic ID, because the fact that no ID was traditionally required was “an actual and perceived weakness in the system”. The arrival at that time of individual voter registration (rather than having the “head of the household” responsible for registration) was thought to have added to that theoretical vulnerability.

In terms of how it has fared in the UK there are two sets of experiences to draw on. The first is turnout in Northern Ireland, where voter ID has been required since 1985, and photo ID since 2002. There seems little difference in turnout rates with the rest of the UK. The second set of cases were the local election pilots in 2018 and 2019. Here the proportion of voters turned away and who did not return with their photo ID was no greater than 0.7 per cent – small, though arguably enough (a few hundred votes) to deliver a few tight constituencies into the Conservative column. Of course you might argue that nowadays the “working class” and even the poor are more likely to vote Conservative, and that old assumptions about the vote need to be updated.

With some 75 per cent of the adult population holding driving licences and with other ID required for even the most mundane of tasks, the arrival of another form of ID such as a voting ID card and a further requirement to prove you are who you say you are isn’t as much of an infringement on traditional liberties as it once was. But there have always been critics, such as a newspaper columnist named Boris Johnson who strangely prefigured the coming parliamentary battles. Back in 2005 he opposed the Labour government’s scheme as follows: “Because the poor lobotomised Labour backbenchers were whipped in favour, there was never the slightest hope of stopping the [Identity Card] Bill. As it turned out, only a handful of principled Tories stuck up for liberty, and they were duly overwhelmed by the government.” Already David Davis, a rebellious Tory backbencher, has rejoined the fight to prevent this new assault on freedom. We shall see how many of his lobotomised backbenchers will stay loyal to the libertarian Johnson of 2005 or the statist Johnson of 2021.