Howard gave a speech in the City in February about his “British Dream”, it was trailed as his libertarian vision. When he said “the people should be big and the state should be small…. “ and to follow the British “…dream wherever it takes you.” He apparently meant you had to take your ID card with you. When he said his vision “means government should let people grow and be wary of taking control away from people…” he meant so long as they had a compulsory state enforced ID card recording their biometric details on a central state register.

So much for liberty Mr Howard.

Boris Johnson will find the new policy difficult to digest methinks; “I tell you this. If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”

What is the point of the Tories? If they don’t want to cut taxes or defend our liberties, what use are they? I may ask Howard himself tonight at the Policy Exchange piss up…