Despite his image, Mr Johnson is no fool. He knew what he was doing when he wrote that Muslim women who wear the niqab look like letter boxes and bank robbers. He was turning a perfectly valid criticism of the veil into dog-whistle politics of the worst kind.
This is the key point. It is perfectly appropriate that Islamic religious practices — as with any religion — should be criticised. Indeed, in a free society it is vital that the fundamental tenets of any religion should be critiqued.
But Mr Johnson is well aware that, while anyone should be able to condemn the niqab, the form of words used to make that condemnation is vital. And Mr Johnson’s words were those of a bar-room bigot.
Our community is rightly sensitive to tone and nuance and while Mr Johnson was, on one level, making a reasoned, liberal case for condemning but not banning the niqab, he was, at a more visceral level in the same piece, sending a nasty, illiberal message.
Our politics has been degraded enough by Mr Corbyn; it is truly depressing that the gutter is now becoming even more crowded.
