Simon Carr: The Sketch

The end is nigh for ID cards

If it was Armageddon - if it was the beginning of the end of the world, if we were embarking on the Rapture - why did we get Kim Howells to introduce it?

Kim does have a lovely Welsh bass; he finds the names difficult, and he follows the text with four fingers instead of the usual one, but he does have a lovely Welsh bass. Lovely voice, nothing to say. Except that peace is the way. People have got to stop bombing each other. Perhaps he'll take the situation in hand tomorrow after a good night's sleep. "Iran? Syria? You're not sitting together any more, you're nothing but trouble. Shut up, Iraq! Come here, Israel, I want a word with you. I'm disappointed in you, I expected better."

We didn't hear much better in the Commons, I fear. They said, "Nobody condones kidnapping soldiers/ bombing civilians" and then the important word, "but..."

We may be coming to the end of the global Blair era, with its big-tent, populist prosperity. We are being lured towards a crime so large that it might be compared to the Holocaust. I don't think global trade is going to be improved by the nuking of Tehran.

Home Office questions. She came out from the chorus line to fill in for John Reid. A star was born.

Why did Dr Reid give identity card questions to this blissfully silly new minister? Is it because he knows the scheme is doomed? Has he calculated that Gordon Brown pulled the plug on police restructuring on grounds of cost, and is bound to do the same for ID cards? Is that why he pushed Joan Ryan, blinking, gawping and struggling for her lines, into the spotlight?

David Davis asked her a factual question. Cruel but fair. The Government claims ID fraud costs banks £504m; the banks claim it costs them £37m. Who was right? Joan Ryan had no answer. She replied: "It's cost a great deal of money."

Mr Davis went on to say that the Government had been accused of exaggerating the ID facts by the banks, the insurance industry and by its own Customs and Excise. Worse, Microsoft and the FBI have warned that the register will create far greater fraud opportunities than exist now: criminals will be duplicating the cards within six months. Ms Ryan said that was like blaming burglary on burglar alarms. Bliss!

NB: It has been calculated that Dr Reid nodded 264 times during Tony Blair's questions session last week. Charles Clarke was famously nicknamed Big Ears. And now we have Noddy! Arf arf!

sketch@simoncarr.co.uk