Virginia Blackburn

YOU’RE in a court of law, being tried for who knows what heinous crime, with the judge and jury noting your every expression and movement as a further way of assessing innocence or guilt. Except that they can’t, because the idiot country in which you live has allowed you not only to swathe yourself in loose robes to hide your body language but even, unbelievably, to cover your face so not so much as a twitch could betray you. Ridiculous, no? And yet that is the situation we have in Britain today.

Muslim women are still allowed to wear the veil in court. No matter that wearing the veil has nothing to do with the Koran and everything to do with the local customs from whence they came, women have been allowed to give evidence from behind the cloth, although at long last it looks like a little common sense will prevail. Supreme Court president Lady Hale has said that it is vital that body language and expressions should be seen to be able to judge whether someone is telling the truth: you don’t say.

Frankly, however, this is not enough: the full face veil should be banned from this country in all circumstances. It is a sign of servitude and bondage and has no place in Western culture. If a woman travels in the Middle East, she is very unlikely to wear a bikini except in the limited areas where such things are accepted. Why should double standards be allowed here?

And in getting rid of the veil, we would be doing the women who wear it a favour. Some say they prefer it to stop men ogling them. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they, if that