Boris Johnson mocks burqas and Liberal Britain gets another kick in the nuts

One of the properly great things about Great Britain is that we are generally opposed to public officials and agents of the State policing non-criminal personal behaviour.

A great example of this is that we have not banned the burqa or the niqab; religious headgear worn by Muslim women. At present, there is no law in the UK forbidding burqas or niqabs in public places. This is because there’s a long-standing general agreement that it really is none of the government’s business to be sticking its nose into the wardrobe choices people make for personal faith reasons.

But as we’ve been learning since what feels like forever, burqas and niqabs actually do cause serious, adverse, reactions in some ‘patriots’. These snowflakes get triggered, froth at the mouth, their big, baldy faces turn red and their heads look like wrinkly, smacked arses. Sometimes, the Stella cans start flying.

So in 2018, it feels like a precious victory for civil liberty and personal freedom that the UK has yet to cave in to the nutty fringe in society, people who want to ban the burqa. This is glorious inaction and it’s in marked contrast to some of our continental – and supposedly classy – cousins. France, Germany, Austria and Denmark all have passed illiberal legislation outlawing the wearing of religious face veils to some degree. Any denial that such law targets religious observance of the Muslim type is undiluted hogwash. It’s perfectly clear what’s going on to anybody with eyes to see.

Laws like this demean the exact values their champions claim they want to upload. They’re bad news because these laws erode everybody’s freedom, whether or not you wear one. Unfortunately, behaviour policing by the State is already rampant in too many areas of UK life, invading people’s personal space. But these outrages don’t justify more outrages. They’re warnings to resist further legal creep into the personal domain we all treasure.

For this reason, it’s something to be proud of that the UK refrains from passing law against wearing religious headgear in public. It shows we have at least a little respect for the civil liberty principle and don’t use the law to harass women for being religiously observant.

So imagine my (complete non-) shock that this hard-earned common decency is under attack, by a man who claims he’s in close touch with the soul and history of the nation. None other than TV personality, power-mad piffle purveyor and banter politician, Boris Johnson.

Click here to read what this self-identifying classical liberal writes in his Telegraph column. Wearing a burqa is ‘completely ridiculous’ and makes the wearer ‘look like a letterbox,’ he claims. Can you believe this is ‘premium content’ on the Telegraph website? You can hear stuff like this for free down the pub. Apparently, the purpose of Johnson’s article was to oppose the Danish burqa ban.

He does call a burqa ban wrong, but these no doubt carefully selected words help erode mutual respect and decency, the stuff we all rely on in order to be ourselves in public. Johnson is politically smart, so I’m sure he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s pandering to a group of extremist voters for his personal political ambitions. This is dog-whistle politics by the man who’s currently favourite with bookies to be next leader of the Conservative party. What a time to be alive.

If Great Britain truly wants to be distinct from Europe, like the Brexit referendum result indicates, then why don’t we stick up for traditions of civil liberty and common decency which our ancestors suffered to establish.