> In principle, there is nothing really that wrong with a digital ID, as at the moment you have a bunch of UUIDs (mostly) so its not actually that hard to marry you up between departments.

It depends. Here's a nice example for you - A while ago the BBC ran a series on council house investigators and their cases. It was very clear for it, that councils don't routinely check whether a prospective council tenant (who'd eventually become a buyer) doesn't already own a property. No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.

Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps, I'm sure it won't be that big of an issue. But as of right now, this is enough to stop routine fraud prevention, which is likely an immediate threat to far more people.

> No checks are done with HMRC for their income levels either.

I'd have to look it up, but some level of background checks are explicitly banned by the RIP act. It was put in place to allow local councils to "snoop" but only in defined situation. (for example if you have noise complaint, the council can't make a recording, but they can accept a recording you make.) but on the other hand they sometimes can inspect your bins to make sure you are not mixing waste streams.

> Of course, if a future government just wants to round up dissidents and send them to camps,

The UK constitution is pretty vulnerable to this. However, even a strong written constitution isn't going to stop that if it becomes socially acceptable.