The Guardian reports that the UK’s new ID cards will not display the Union Flag or even the EU flag. The rationale being that they wanted to respect the “identity rights” of Irish nationals living in Northern Ireland.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said ID cards had been unpopular for so long that few remembered their genesis. “They were part of a clumsy cohesion agenda to unite us around flags rather than values. They were to fight the multiple identities that make up modern Britain by forcing us to choose between the various ties that bind us. Ironically, in forgetting the very ‘un-Britishness’ of ID cards, the government has united the country against them.”