ID cards - now do you understand?

The new UK ID card was unveiled this week and will be rolled out to some of those parts of the UK population that do not have the vote - people from outside the EU renewing their permission to stay in the UK. The next group to fall foul of this Labour governments' salami-slicing tactics will be those working in airport restricted areas. The cards will not be "made available" to the rest of the UK population until 2011, safely after the next general election.

What I found most interesting was that this UK ID card has no Union flag on it or indeed any mention of the United Kingdom. Instead there are five stars taken from a part of the EU flag and a picture of a bull just as other EU ID cards have. You could be persuaded that this was the forerunner of an EU-wide ID card; how cynical of you. Jacqui Smith, the most hopeless Home Secretary since the last, explained this away by saying that other countries in the EU did not have their national flags on their ID cards. She believes that is an argument in her favour, whereas I believe that that is the whole point, the EU is reducing the incidence of national symbols and flags whilst increasing the incidence of the EU flag appearing. Take a look at every capital project in the EU, obviously you will find these more easily in Southern and Eastern Europe than in the UK, and you will see the EU flag alongside an explanation that the project was funded by the EU. The EU sees itself as a country to replace its constituent countries and the next UK general election, if we are allowed one, may well be our last.

Remember it was only a year ago that it was revealed that the EU had plans to replace the UK passport's opening statement that

"Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary."

with this "elegant" prose alternative:

"Every citizen of the Union shall, in the territory of a third country in which the members of state of which he is a national is not represented, be entitled to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of any member state, on the same conditions as the nationals of that state."

The single market is on the verge of becoming the single state, is it too late to stop it?