The New Statesman

How many U-turns before you admit you don't know where you're going?

As little as four months ago, Kirstama said,

This government will make a new free-of-charge digital ID mandatory for the right to work by the end of this Parliament.

Let me spell that out.

You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID.

Now he's done yet another 180.

At what point does pragmatism become cowardice?

Is this a confection of the right wing media?

What does Kirstama believe? I'm Olly Dougmore and this is Daily Politics from the New Statesman. Joining me in the

studio is Britain editor, Anoush Akalian. Hello, Anoush. And dialing in from Westminster is our political

editor, Alva, hello Alva. Hello. Anoush. Why has Stama back down on this policy?

What's going on?

Well, there's a few reasons for this.

First of all, I think it's telling, as Alva reported in her piece for the new statesman, which is really good, which all of our listeners should go and read, the polling really changed on this policy quite rapidly.

So it had 35% popularity in the summer of

2025. In the weekend after that had been announced by Kirstama, it slumped to minus 14%. And there

is a quote in Alva's piece. Someone describes this as a reverse midas touch. So something that

would have been quite popular

with the public, as soon as it was linked with Kirstama or the Labour government's policy agenda,

it slumped in terms of its popularity. And I think that's a wider spread problem that they're

going to have to address. But I think that's one of the reasons because it was something that

...