He needed a burka... to dodge press
BURKAS hide a person’s face and make it hard to gauge their intentions, said Ukip yesterday. That being the case, Ukip leader Paul Nuttall should possibly have worn one to help him dodge a howling press pack which chased him down a London hotel corridor, yelping questions about whether or not he would contest a seat in the General Election.
The policies presented by Ukip yesterday were bracingly serious. They were part of an ‘integration agenda’ to combat ‘Islamist ideology’. This included a ban on burkas and other veils, a ban on Sharia law and a moratorium on new Islamic schools.
The Kippers also wanted the introduction of medical checks to make sure ‘high-risk’ girls are not subjected to genital mutilation (a horrible practice followed in certain parts of Africa).
It is rare to hear such forthright ideas raised in an election campaign. Some in the media crowd reacted sharply. At the end of the event an otherwise placid journalist next to me swore. He can hardly have been shocked by the proposal to make officials print documents only in English, or to crack down on postal-voting fraud. Perhaps it was simply an old Pavlovian habit of baulking at any politician who criticises multiculturalism.
A man from Sky News wanted to know if the policies were a ‘desperate’ response to the threat Ukip faces from the Conservatives.
A reporter from the Daily Telegraph – where else? – was concerned about beekeepers. Would their face-nets survive Ukip rules? A woman from one of the la- di- dah broadsheets was worried about the effect Ukip’s ban might have on white-wedding veils. An earnest lad from LBC radio fretted about Roman Catholic nuns and their headgear. Would they be kippered?
Margot Parker, Ukip’s ‘women and equalities spokesman’ (yes, they have one), explained that nuns do not hide their faces and would therefore be unaffected. The good news for apiarists was that they, too, would not be stung. You could sense the Ukip team thinking ‘oh for heaven’s sake, grow up’ as they listened to these journalists’ questions.
The mid-morning event was held in the Marriott Hotel’s wood-panelled Herbert Morrison room, named after Peter Mandelson’s grandfather. ‘Once again Ukip is leading the debate and we are ten years ahead of our time,’ claimed Mr Nuttall. ‘Something has to be done,’ he said, to accelerate the integration of Islamic people into British society. Some European coun- tries were far tougher on extreme Islamic culture.
Ukip’s education spokesman, David Kurten, mentioned places such as Luton, Rotherham and East London where there is ‘little or no integration’.
‘Islamism is a poisonous strain of ideology,’ said Mr Kurten, who, irritatingly for liberals, is black, and therefore harder to smear as a racist. He quoted extreme Islamic teachings about the evils of the West. Britain needed ‘strong action, not political correctness’ to fight such people, said the sturdy Kurten.
Mrs Parker (a sometime lingerie saleswoman) spoke in a civilised, restrained manner, not only arguing against burkas and genital mutilation from the feminist angle but also pointing out that modern Western culture had plenty wrong with its coarse ‘lad culture’ and its celebrity magazines that sometimes promote women as sex objects.
‘It is important to bolster the views of liberal Muslims,’ she said. Ukip was ‘ a positive and progressive force in society’.
THE Lefties in the audience were by now doing a fair amount of twitching and fistgnawing. They had come to laugh at Ukip, not to hear it promote feminism and liberalism. Not fair, ref! Mr Nuttall remained well out of the picture, staying in his seat while the party’s deputy leader, Peter Whittle, batted away racism accusations and said ‘these issues are of existential importance’ to Britain. As far as Ukip’s electoral survival goes, Mr Whittle attacked ‘the money-is-everything Tories and the Britain haters in Labour’.
Not much time was permitted for questions. As the meeting broke up, Mr Nuttall strode off down the corridor, pursued by scribes waving notebooks like impis with spears.