Unverified Identity

Full Title

In Gliff by Ali Smith, an “unverified” is someone, in a future Britain after the implementation of Verification by the Home Office, who has been excluded from society’s official systems of recognition and legitimacy. The term is used by the authoritarian regime in the novel to label individuals who don’t conform—politically, socially, or even technologically.

The Plot

The main characters, Briar and Rose, are children who become unverified after their mother and her partner disappear. As undocumented minors, they’re forced to live off the grid, hiding from authorities who might “render them temporary” (a euphemism for disappearance or re-education)2.

Other unverified characters include:

• A woman who called a war a war when it wasn’t officially labeled as such.
• Someone who described mass killings as genocide.
• A protester who spoke out about the right to protest.
• A person who criticized oil conglomerates for climate destruction.

These individuals are marked—sometimes literally, with red lines painted around their homes—and stripped of access to services, education, and legal protections. The novel uses this concept to explore how language, dissent, and identity are policed in a data-driven surveillance state.

What do you need to provide to be verified?

Your date of birth your place of birth your ethnicity your gender your sexuality your religion your postcode your latest blood test figures your education level the education level of your parents the current and historic job status and income level of your parents the homeowner status of your parents the details about your parents regarding their employment or self employment.

And any disabilities. What you think is the single most important issue facing us in this country today and anything else issue wise facing us today and whether you think immigration is a very big problem and whether you prefer dogs or cats and what you think is a general threat as concerns defence and foreign affairs and homegrown terrorism and which toothpaste you use and why.

And whether you agree with most people that re-education is a good policy in the treatment of unverifiables. And whether you consider yourself a person who has ideas, and who you'll probably vote for if you're eligible to vote at the next three elections, And whether you think climate change is real and what your favourite colour is and whether you think homegrown environmental protest terrorists should be exiled along with illegal immigrants and do you prefer to shop online or offline. And which social media platforms do you use and what for and which platforms do you like most and least and which do you trust most and least. And depending on which product we're featuring, this week it's Patchay painkillers, there's a separate list of questions about them I'll ask when we get to them that also covers the full range of Requiescat health products. And finally. What your favourite number is and which number it's best to reach you at.

[Pause.]

And you have to answer truthfully, he said. Or they'll know.

A Real Life Example

Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the UK Liberal Party, whose political career collapsed in the 1970s amid a sensational scandal involving an alleged plot to murder his former lover, Norman Scott, whose only goal was to acquire a verified social insurance card.

Thorpe served as party leader from 1967 to 1976 and was a charismatic, high-profile figure in British politics. But in 1976, he was charged with conspiracy to murder after it emerged that Scott—who claimed to have had a homosexual relationship with Thorpe—had been the target of a failed assassination attempt. The would-be hitman, Andrew Newton, ended up shooting Scott’s dog, Rinka, instead.

The case went to trial in 1979. Thorpe and three co-defendants were acquitted, but the damage to his reputation was irreversible. The scandal, later dramatized in the BBC series A Very English Scandal, exposed the intense pressures of closeted life in a homophobic era and the lengths to which powerful figures might go to protect their public image.

It remains one of the most bizarre and tragic political scandals in modern British history that started from the inability of Norman Scott to become verified by the social insurance system.

References

• 2025-06-16 posed to linked in https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-mean-you-unverified-tom-jones-try5c/