Beyond the Consensus: How Conspiracy-Minded and Tommy Robinson-Aligned Groups Understand Digital ID

When the UK government floats proposals for digital identity systems, public opinion polls suggest a comfortable majority of support. Yet beneath this headline consensus lies a profound fracture in British civic trust—one that risks turning digital ID into a flashpoint for wider democratic grievances.

A new research report, “Understanding Attitudes Towards Government ID Cards”, exposes this hidden landscape by speaking directly to two of Britain's most sceptical and increasingly influential constituencies: conspiracy-minded citizens and supporters of Tommy Robinson's populist nationalism. By listening to their perceptions, narratives and emotional drivers, the research reveals not merely opposition to a technical proposal, but a window into a broader cultural crisis in contemporary Britain.

The Scale of Scepticism

The research, conducted through qualitative focus groups by The Outsiders and supported by Resilience and Reconstruction, mapped attitudes among two distinct but overlapping groups. While Tommy Robinson's hard core numbers in the low hundreds of thousands at most, his September 2025 “Unite the Kingdom” march attracted an estimated 110,000–150,000 participants, and his social media accounts reach hundreds of thousands of viewers. Conspiracy-minded individuals constitute a far larger population: a 2023 UK survey found that roughly 10–15% of adults hold entrenched conspiratorial worldviews, suggesting several million people in the UK alone.

These are not fringe outliers. They are increasingly mobilised publics capable of shaping political discourse, driving parliamentary debates and—as seen with digital ID petitions gaining millions of signatures—forcing policy reviews.

Two Groups, Distinct but United

The research reveals striking differences between the two constituencies. Tommy Robinson supporters ground their worldview in the tangible, visceral realities of everyday British life: stabbings and street crime attributed to migration, NHS collapse, cost-of-living pressures, cultural displacement. They speak in the urgent present tense: “It's happening now”, “I saw this just yesterday”. Their grievances are concrete and personal.

Conspiracy-minded participants, by contrast, look toward the long-term future. They speak of “Agenda 2030”, the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and the slow unfolding of hidden agendas. Their concerns are systemic rather than personal—not about the stabbings on their street, but about the invisible architecture being built for future control. When they express fear about digital ID, they situate it as one piece of a global control grid, not as a standalone policy proposal.

Yet despite these differences, both groups are united by something far more fundamental: a profound sense of distrust in government, media and institutional authority; a conviction that they lack agency in decisions that shape their lives; and an absolute certainty that official narratives—especially on immigration—are fundamentally dishonest.

As one conspiracy-minded participant put it: “I feel like it's all just done to make people believe they've got a voice. In reality… it's been set out already, no one's really got a voice apart from the people who are much higher up”.

A Tommy Robinson supporter expressed near-identical alienation: “Our politicians seem not to know what to do… it just seems like our politicians aren't aware of the country's priorities, it just seems like I'm banging my head against a wall… Nothing actually changes”.

Yet both groups converge on identical core convictions: digital ID is fundamentally about control, not security; once implemented, it will be impossible to reverse; refusal will lead to social and economic exclusion; and official justifications are lies masking darker intentions.

Why This Matters Beyond ID

What makes this research valuable is not merely its documentation of opposition to a specific policy, but its revelation of the democratic crisis beneath. Both groups do not simply distrust this government on this issue. They have lost faith in democratic institutions themselves.

The research's implications extend far beyond digital identity policy. It demonstrates why these groups cannot be treated as fringe outliers and why any attempt to implement digital ID—or indeed any major policy requiring significant public consent—without taking their narratives seriously risks deepening polarisation, fuelling disinformation and undermining the very legitimacy such schemes depend on.

Digital ID has become a symbol of everything these groups believe has gone wrong with contemporary Britain: a state that no longer serves, protects or listens to "ordinary people." As both groups suggest, their resistance to digital ID is really their resistance to a political system that has excluded them from meaningful participation and ignored their lived experiences.

What Would It Take to Rebuild Trust?

Notably, the research also reveals that even these highly sceptical groups can articulate potential benefits—around convenience, fraud reduction or clarity of status—when schemes are framed in ways that acknowledge their fears, offer genuine transparency and safeguards, and avoid dismissive or technocratic language.

If policymakers approach digital ID as merely a technical or communications challenge, they will miss this crucial opportunity to demonstrate procedural fairness, institutional honesty and responsiveness. In a landscape where millions of Britons have lost faith in their government, media and institutions, digital ID risks becoming another symbol of elite imposition rather than a practical tool serving the public good.

References

The Outsiders & Resilience and Reconstruction. (2025). Understanding Attitudes Towards Government ID Cards: Research conducted with Tommy Robinson-supporting and conspiracy-minded respondents. Unpublished research report, July-September 2025.