So, although our Prime Minister, yeah, was stranded in South Africa while the Commons debated compulsory ID cards, he has got his deeply suspect way and we will get his cards.  The government won by 31 votes.  It has a Commons majority of 64.

The bill will now go back to the Upper House for its second reading.  So the next question to be answered is whether their Lordships will re-insert their prior amendment suspending all action on the cards until full costs are known.  The government’s margin of victory on that tonight - 53 votes - may well be sufficient to stay their hand.  This looks like a lost war.  I will probably have to change my blog handle to 6530988747.

There is always, though, the wild hope and succour for the truly, madly desperate of a Cameron victory in 2009.  That dubious pleasure might save us from having to register our “personal details” with the state.  Whether David Cameron is a torch-bearer for freedom is, of course, wholly unknown.  More likely, he is a torch-singer for MI5.

While our Prime Minister, yeah, has been slumming it in lovely, downtown Soweto his Chancellor has made another in his series of speeches about what Britain Under Brown will be like.  Awfully British value-wise, apparently.  At United Royal Services Club in London he “called for a battle for the hearts and minds of British Muslims to prevent them coming under the influence of Islamic extremists.”

Notwithstanding the fine record of success of past campaigns for alien hearts and minds - Viet Nam always comes to the fore, I think, but Iraq is right up there, too - I really can’t see this working.  Frankly, if I was a Muslim and I saw Mr Brown reaching out to me, I’d run like hell in the direction of Finsbury.

McPrudence has other ideas, too.  He also outlined plans for a National Veterans’ Day to be celebrated each June with ceremonies in every constituency and the presentation of medals to veterans.  Presumably, as many heroes as possible, or even more, will be brown-skinned.

This follows on the appalling suggestion made to the Fabian Society last month, that:-

In any survey our most popular institutions range from the monarchy to the army to the NHS.  But think: what is our Fourth of July?  What is our Independence Day?  Where is our declaration of rights?  What is our equivalent of a flag in every garden?  Perhaps Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday are the nearest we have come to a British day - unifying, commemorative, dignified and an expression of British ideas of standing firm for the world in the name of liberty.

It was the unifying aspect he was interested in, of course.  What he had not understood was that Remembrance Day unites the generations.  It is predicated on lineage, on respect not for our institutions or, God help us, our values, but for our fathers.  It is not and can never become a multiculturalist beanfeast, as he hoped.

John Hawthornthwaite, National Chairman of the Royal British Legion, duly killed it off, saying, “Anything that would dilute what Remembrance Sunday and November 11 stand for would not be welcome.  They have been instituted to remember the sacrifices of those who died for our freedom.”

Still, Scottish Mr Brown is dogged as well as terminally dour.  He wants a renewed patriotism and the flag reclaimed from the BNP.  “The union flag should be a British symbol of unity around our values,” McStealth said, “and we should assert that the union flag is for tolerance and inclusion.”

He meant, no doubt, tolerance of the Barnett Formula ... inclusion of Scottish MP’s voting on English matters.  But while we are flagwaving for the left, let’s not forget fairness, liberty and decency.  And responsibility and equality and hands that do dishes can feel as soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid.  I despair at the stupidity of liberals who, apparently, honestly believe that an ancient nation founded on blood like any other can be turned by government dictat into a club for whoever fetches up here and mouths a few platitudes at the nearest immigration officer.  It does not work like that.

If this is all Mr Brown can come up with in response to the London Bombings his premiership is doomed.