There are some 3 million compelling reasons for Prime Minister Keir Starmer not to roll out a national system of mandatory digital identity cards.

That¡¯s the number of signatures on a monster online parliamentary petition opposing his plan ¡ª announced in late September ¡ª even before an official consultation could begin. On a recent trip to India, Starmer pointed to that country¡¯s vast digital ID system as a ¡°massive success,¡± taking in a visit to Infosys, one of the biggest providers of its architecture.

Back home, the opposition is plainly formidable. But what of the benefits? Many countries with strong traditions of civil liberties have ID cards. For governments like the U.K.¡¯s, the blend of existing digital technology and the introduction of artificial intelligence holds out the promise of creating an efficient e-government of joined-up public services ¡ª and with it the eradication of tedious form filling and rifling through drawers for bank statements to prove who we are.

Many of us who might on previous aborted outings of the identity-card idea have huffed that the state has no right to gather yet more of our personal data find ourselves open to revisiting the notion. My mind was changed to some degree when I visited the digitally go-ahead Baltic republic of Estonia and saw that the future largely works. Estonians have more reason to be freedom lovers than most, given their past as a colony of the Soviet Union, but their embrace of a digital ID system means they can now vote online (85% do) and register births or deaths. Married couples can even separate and divide their worldly goods online. Some 3,000 state services can be accessed without needing to stand in a queue or send in paperwork.

Even the glum evenings spent filling out a tax return have been reduced to five minutes because their forms are automatically repopulated with data submitted the previous year; all that¡¯s needed is a quick update. It also has safeguards that answer a fundamental worry of many Brits ¡ª the government can¡¯t access files without a court order and any security breaches leave an electronic trace, lessening the chance of large incursions going unnoticed until the damage is done.

Given we spend so much of our lives online or on social media, it might seem odd that U.K. political parties of all flavors have been quick to unite against what they deem a step towards an Orwellian Big Brother state. In part, this is historical: ¡°Papers¡± have been regarded as un-British ever since their brief introduction in World War II. These objections are not wholly frivolous; the operations of the British state can indeed be clumsy and intrusive.

The...