Burkas must not always be tolerated

IT IS every woman’s right to cover herself from head to foot and peek out at the world through a three-inch slit if that is her free choice.

I could not bear it but I have enough imagination to know that there really are women who believe it right and who would feel uncomfortable displaying themselves, just as I could not bear to shut myself away from any contact with the world but can still accept that some feel called to join silent, closed orders of monasteries and convents. No thanks but if that’s your scene then fine.

However there are places where it is not appropriate to cover the face: when giving evidence in court, teaching or going through airport security are just three very obvious examples. A free society must surely be able to accommodate a woman walking down the street in a burka while also stipulating that there are occasions when the law and employment practice will demand she show her face.

Boris Johnson, a Conservative Brexiteer, believes in that sort of society. His sister Rachel, a journalist and liberal Remainer, does not. She would support a ban on the burka, something I already knew because when we were making a pilot for a TV programme she expressed utter disbelief that anybody might freely choose to wear one. She also expressed disbelief in the course of that same pilot that anybody might actually believe the Catholic position on another issue and gaped at me when I said I did.

These two very close and loyal siblings sum up the difference between those who believe in true freedom and those who do so only when a view matches their own understanding. Beware the liberal dictatorship.