Originally Posted by
measures
And of course anyone having stood behind UK driving licence holders who expected the checkin staff to accept a non-photo driving licence as proof of id and wouldn't move away know why that was,
No, that wasn't the reason. They decided to stop accepting EVERYTHING except passports (and national identity cards in those countries that have them). Just like other airlines they used to have a list of acceptable documents (though theirs was always shorter than those of their competitors, and had some weird exceptions - like "photo driving licence accepted only if your place of birth is in the EU").
AFAIR they got rid of the whole list at the same time that they got rid of check-in desks.