A scheme was scrapped and a popular policy funded by it. That is not, on its own, discretion.

The story

Metro reports that the government's digital identity card scheme, one of the previous administration's flagship projects, has been scrapped, with the freed-up funding redirected to help pay for a VAT cut. The story was reported alongside other budget lines being reshuffled in the same announcement. No stated rule or enforcement standard is described as being applied unevenly here; one programme is cancelled, and the money is moved to another.

The reframe

At first glance this looks like exactly the kind of story this project covers. A government cancels one policy and funds another, more popular one, with the money. That is the shape of several entries already published here, and it would be easy to write this one the same way: a flagship scheme abandoned, its money quietly repurposed, framed as fiscal discipline when it is really a political trade.

The problem is that nothing in the reporting supports that reading. The book's argument is about selective enforcement: a rule that exists and is applied to some people or cases but not others, with the gap between the stated standard and the actual application doing the work. Cancelling a programme and reallocating its budget is not that. Governments cancel and fund things constantly; it is one of the ordinary mechanics of budgeting, not a case of a rule being bent for one party and held firm for another. There is no rule here being applied selectively. There is no stated standard against which anyone's treatment can be shown to be an exception. There is just a spending decision, defended or attacked on ordinary political grounds.

Why this doesn't hold

For this to be a genuine example, there would need to be a rule, standard, or commitment applied unevenly, something closer to the book's usual pattern of a policy holding for most cases and bending for one. What the Metro report actually describes is one programme ending and its budget moving elsewhere, which is a normal feature of how governments allocate money and not, on the evidence available, an instance of discretion operating unevenly. It is included here so the project's method stays visible even where it does not apply, rather than only publishing the cases that fit.