Glasgow is friendly and welcoming... unlike Boris

ONE of things I’m proudest of about Glasgow and the rest of Scotland is the way we warmly and enthusiastically welcome people to our city and our country.

Glasgow’s friendliness is legendary, and rightly so.

Our city has become, over the decades, a melting pot of cultures, languages and traditions. It has made us a truly international and cosmopolitan city.

That diversity, of backgrounds, cultures, faiths and ideas, is something I believe needs to be celebrated and cherished.

Our city isn’t perfect, but the warmth of our welcome and the way we look out for others – whether they are visitors or residents – is something we can and should take pride in. And it is something we should always seek to protect.

We showed that once again in recent weeks with the fantastic welcome the city laid on for the European Championships.

But Glasgow’s warmth and friendliness has been at the front of my mind for over the last week or so for other, very particular, reasons in the aftermath of Boris Johnson’s provocative comments about women who wear the burqa.

Let’s be clear about this – Johnson’s comments were wrong and offensive.

Firstly, it is not OK for men to dictate to women either what they must or must not wear. As long as a Muslim woman is making a free choice, it is up to her what she wears – no one else.

Second, Johnson was choosing to pick on women who are all too often already subject to significant prejudice and misunderstanding.

Only he knows exactly how calculated his comments were, amid his own carefully cultivated buffoonery – though I suspect he knew exactly what he was doing.

But, whether the comments were thrown into his now notorious newspaper column at the last moment, or whether they were something he gave more thought to is largely irrelevant.

The fact is, the mask has slipped – the remarks reveal what Johnson really thinks.

And, whatever his apologists may claim, they were nasty, divisive and offensive comments which expose a seam of ugly sentiment within the Tory party.

And they are the kind of remarks that, by their very nature, can only serve to inflame tensions and give implicit encouragement to some of the worst elements in society. It was dog whistle politics at its worst.

They are also exactly the kind of comments – and sentiments – which are so at odds with our own experience here in Glasgow, where, for all the problems which may exist, our different communities and cultures interact and get along very well.

What makes things worse is Boris Johnson’s refusal to apologise, or to accept in any way that he is in the wrong.

In fairness, some Tory colleagues of the former Foreign Secretary have attacked him for what he said, and he is now the subject of an internal party inquiry.

But among the wider issues, let’s not forget that this was the man who was – almost unbelievably – until a few weeks ago the UK’s top diplomat, supposedly representing all of us on the global stage.

And that in turn exposes something else. Because the fact is Johnson is representative of a significant swathe of mainstream opinion in the Tory party.

And this is the party that claims to have Scotland’s best interests at heart as they drag us closer to the cliff edge of a no-deal Brexit.

Things may have gone a bit quiet on the Brexit front in recent weeks, but no one should be fooled by this summer lull. Behind the scenes, the Tories are allowing things to inch ever closer to the precipice.

A no-deal Brexit would be utterly disastrous for jobs, investment and livelihoods the length and breadth of Scotland and the rest of the UK.

We’ve seen recent reports on how Brexit has already pushed up the average price of groceries and other household goods. And doctors leaders are warning of the threat posed to the NHS in terms of retaining doctors and nurses, access to medicines and funding for vital medical research. That’s the same NHS Boris Johnson claimed would be better off by £350million a week as a result of leaving the EU.

Among the meetings I’ve had over the last week was one with Scotland’s seafood sector, part of our wider food and drink industry, which has been an enormous success story over recent years.

Exports of everything from Scottish salmon to whisky have been booming. But, again, all of that is now threatened by Brexit – the same Brexit championed by Boris Johnson. Johnson’s ignorant and offensive remarks about Muslim women are rejected by the vast majority of people in Scotland.

And he and his party’s disastrous and cack-handed bid to drag us out of Europe against our will are similarly rejected by most.

With every day that passes right now, it seems clearer than ever that Scotland will be better off by far when people like Boris Johnson have no say at all in our affairs.

‘‘ The mask has slipped – the remarks reveal what Boris Johnson really thinks