ID cards doomed as Labour looks for public savings

Gordon Brown could be forced to hold a bonfire of public spending vanities when he gets back to reality from his latest global tour of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland.

The Independent reports today that the dropping of the £5bn ID cards project is a real likelihood. "My sense is that ID cards will not go ahead," a senior Cabinet Minister told the paper. "We have to find savings somewhere, and it would be better to shelve schemes like this that aren't popular."

But the ID cards sacrifice could be just the tip of the pyre. The third tranche of the £20bn Eurofighter - a project that Brown was against from the outset - is now under serious threat as the Treasury puts the squeeze on public spending in an effort to put some limit on Alistair Darling's colossal borrowing totals for the future.

Quentin Davies, the defence equipment minister, took the unusual step last week of making a very public plea to the Treasury not to scrap the scheme while he was on a trip to RAF Coningsby where some of the Eurofighters, known as the Typhoons, are based.

Davies, a former Tory toff, is regarded by Labour MPs as a bit of an unguided missile, and his very public appeal casts even more doubt on the Treasury agreeing to the final phase of the project. Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain are in negotiations with European plane maker EADS to buy only about 45 per cent of the planned third tranche.

Jobs are key, of course, with a general election looming. Which is why the Cabinet may, against its better judgment, still give the go-ahead to a £75bn replacement for Trident, Britain's nuclear weapons system. The submarines required to carry the missile are built in Barrow in the north west of England and thousands of jobs are dependent on the contract.

Left-wing Labour MPs, growing in confidence since the state rescue of the banks, are campaigning hard against the Trident replacement, arguing that the money would be better spent on buildiung council houses.

But Brown, while committing Britain to negotiating a reduction in its nuclear arsenal, still sees a big missile tipped by a sophisticated multiple nuclear warhead as something to wave around at the UN Security Council. ·