A liberal pilloried

In his weekly column in this newspaper on Monday, Boris Johnson made a strong case for freedom of expression. He said that in Britain, unlike in some European countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Belgium and now Denmark, Muslim women should not be forbidden from wearing Islamic dress like the niqab or burka. He considered such garb to be oppressive and ridiculous, likening it to a letter-box or disguising the wearer as for a bank robbery. But this was not a reason to prohibit it, he said.

To most right-thinking people this article, written with the former foreign secretary’s customary elan, was a defence of the rights of Muslim women to dress as they please. His concern – and it is one shared by many – is that they are often not dressing as they please but as they are required to by their community. It might be imagined that those who care about women’s rights would share some of these misgivings. Alternatively, liberals might be expected to praise Mr Johnson for his stand in defence of religious freedom, even if they do not seem to have made a fuss when other EU countries banned the burka outright.

But not a bit of it. Mr Johnson is now the latest occupant of the public pillory, fatuously being denounced for a “hate crime” and for pandering to the far-right. Labour evidently is taking the opportunity to divert attention from its deepening woes over anti-semitism. But several Tories, including the party chairman Brandon Lewis, have joined in, perhaps to nip Mr Johnson’s leadership ambitions in the bud. To do so by claiming he holds racist or Islamophobic views is simply preposterous.