1) I don't like centralised ID, its ripe for abuse.

2) I don't like the idea of crapita/accenture/G4S/some other dipshit company designing and running this.

However

if its an extension of the government gateway, then actually the only "innovation" here is the presumable fine for not keeping it up to date. (that and the smartphone integration, which I suspect is largely symbolic)

So long as its GDS rolling it out, and its properly designed (two big ifs) then in principle it could be a useful as the original GDS scheme to make government services "digital"

But, the problems of authoritarianism are not to be ignored. starmer doesn't have the bollocks to be a dictator, but jenrick and farage do. Our constitution has no guards against authoritarian capture, its just "good men" doing "good deeds". That was easily overridden with Boris. A decent majority in the House of commons gives you alomst unlimited power of the state.