Alan Johnson hasn’t abolished anything, for the simple reason that there has never been a serious plan to make having an ID card compulsory, and the government doesn’t have the powers to do it.

What they do have, and what they are still intending to do, is the power to make registration on the underlying database – the National Identity Register – to anyone applying for a “designated document”. AIUI these were the powers which would have been used for the airside worker scheme. That’s gone but the other, and much bigger, plan to make the UK passport a designated document is still very much alive.

So from 2011 when you apply for or renew a passport you will have the option to get an ID card but you will be compelled to register on the NIR.

The airside workers have won a minor skirkish, but for the general populace the war is still very much on.