Dear Editor
THIS reflection is offered for information only. It is not legal advice. For specific guidance, consult a qualified solicitor or barrister.
Freedom has a perimeter. Breach it, and everything within is at risk. In technology we rely on firewalls. In human life, our firewall is consent — silent until it must act, the last line between liberty and control.
When consent is eroded, even quietly, the code of control seeps inward. It begins with assurances of safety or efficiency. It ends with a human being reduced to a datapoint, their rights dependent on compliance.
This is the danger in the push for compulsory digital identification — whether through smartphone apps, biometric cards or central-bank digital currencies. The language is all about convenience. But the reality is presumed consent, where refusal itself becomes suspect. Once enrolled, you are merged with a statutory construct, and access to everyday life stands behind a gate of code.
Our own legal tradition has long resisted this. Magna Carta (1297) insisted that no free person may be deprived of liberty or property without due process. In Entick v Carrington (1765) the court ruled that state officers have no authority without lawful warrant. Modern law echoes the same: the Human Rights Act 1998 (Article 8 ECHR) and the UK GDPR demand that consent be ‘freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous’, or else that necessity be lawful and proportionate. Blanket compulsion cannot meet that test.
The very word ‘mandatory’ is worth questioning. At common law, a mandate once meant an offer of agency, the duty only arose when the agent agreed. Coercion without right is not law, but force.
So what can one do? The firewall works quietly. It does not shout. It blocks what has no right to enter. Consent does the same. A practical rebuttal might look like this:
1. I do not consent to enrolment in any compulsory digital-identification scheme.
2. At common law no one may be deprived of liberty or property without due process. Magna Carta and Entick v Carrington remain in force.
3. Human Rights law and the UK GDPR require freely given and unambiguous consent. These conditions are unmet by compulsion.
4. I require assurance that refusal will not prejudice my rights or access to services, and that my private capacity will not be interfered with.
Such words, even privately affirmed, keep the firewall alive.
The point is not defiance for its own sake. It is stewardship. To defend consent is to defend the boundary without which every other freedom becomes negotiable. The firewall we maintain today is the one our children will inherit tomorrow.
Hold the line. Quietly, firmly.
Andrew D Harry Re the Tory Party conference – has anything changed? They came up with some interesting proposals, competing with Labour to steal from Reform.
I’m afraid it’s not enough just to tell us that they will be pursuing policies more in line with what people want. That should be the baseline of any government.
Before we can trust the Tories again, we need them to confront their sins, and there are many. When they can admit to us that recent Tory governments deliberately followed policies that were destructive and globalist by nature, we might start listening to them.
With Labour, LibDems and Greens, the Tories colluded to stop new parties getting into Parliament, to keep us under the thumb of the EU, to promote globalist socialist policies and generally to agree the country’s direction.
Specifically, the massive transgressions of recent Tory governments include:
Driving Net Zero hard and allowing it to make us uncompetitive while destroying our commerce and industry. Additionally they imposed many policies against car drivers. They did not follow the science; they did however make energy very expensive for no good reason and littered our land and sea with worthless windmills and solar panels;
Making day-to-day living so expensive for ordinary people by adverse economic policies which Labour are still pursuing. Massively over-taxing everyone, discouraging investors, closing down high streets and seriously reducing our quality of life;
Oppressive legislation to curtail freedoms started with the Tories and they carried on with allowing more illegals into the country;
Piling up our national debt with huge sums sent abroad for questionable purposes, not managing the economy professionally and allowing government spending to get seriously out of hand;
External influence over HMG decisions has been suggested often. Admit how this happened so that it can be avoided in future.
A simple ‘Sorry’ will not suffice. If the Tories are ever going to be considered for office again, they must confront where they went so badly off the rails before and show they are determined not to repeat the same tyrannical strategy. I strongly suggest this should be done as a big part of the next party conference.
Bryan Harris
Swanley, Kent
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