Boris Johnson turned away from voting after forgetting photo ID

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station when trying to vote in local elections after forgetting to bring photo ID. He later returned to his South Oxfordshire polling station with an acceptable form of identification.

A spokesperson for the former prime minister told ITV News: "Mr Johnson voted Conservative." Mr Johnson introduced the 2022 law requiring all voters in England to produce photo ID.

At the time, the government said the change was "to strengthen the integrity of the electoral process". Boris Johnson is not the only senior Conservative to forget photo ID at this election.

On Wednesday, Conservative MP Tom Hunt asked local members to help him vote.

“Bit of drama. Turns out I have no appropriate ID to vote tomorrow," the Ipswich MP messaged local Tories. "There is an emergency proxy option if you lose your ID … who would like the honours?” Mr Hunt later said his dyspraxia was the reason he had lost his documents.

Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said on Thursday that Downing Street had no concerns about the new requirement for voter ID: “We don’t want to see anyone turned away from polling stations, we want everyone to be able to vote."

Experience from the last local elections was that 99.75% of people were able to cast their vote successfully.

In 2004, Boris Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that if he were ever asked to produce ID he would "take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it.”

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