I wrote, a couple of weeks ago and in the aftermath of the tabloid press “Freedom of Speech furore following the judgment in the case of Sir Cliff Richard against the BBC, of the need to strike a balance between the right of a journalist to comment and the requirement for that same journalist to exercise responsibility and balance when reporting. I clearly missed a trick: I should have added into the equation the need to use measured and moderate language when covering sensitive issues. 

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I had not, though, anticipated that my parliamentary colleague the former Mayor of London would, with both feet planted firmly in his mouth, give gratuitous offence to a significant ethnic minority that in large part, whether fellow-travellers of the British National Party like it or not, is as British as he is himself. This, remember, is the Cabinet Minister who as, fleetingly, Foreign Secretary, committed the gaffe that may well have led to the prolonged incarceration of a UK citizen in an Iranian prison.

 

As Mr. Johnson`s remarks were first published a week ago let me refresh the memory. He said: 

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“It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes. If a constituent came to my MPs surgery with her face obscured I should feel fully entitled to ask her to remove it. If a female student turned up at a school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto”.  

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For the record Mr. Johnson did not say, as some have tried to infer, that as in Denmark and in France, for example, the wearing of the Burka should be banned. 

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It is entirely accepted that for security purposes, at immigration checkpoints at our ports and airports, for example, and in a court of law or for constabulary identification, it has to be right that people should be unveiled. 

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It is also perfectly reasonable to debate whether or not the wearing of the Burka is oppressive or a mark of true faith as it must be to discuss the fact that Nuns wear habits, that Buddhist Monks wear saffron robes, that Orthodox Jews wear hats and that Sikhs wear turbans. It is even, surely, permissible in a free society to discuss whether Scotsmen should wear kilts or transgender males should wear female attire in public.  

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What is out of order, and the reason for much Parliamentary if not public condemnation is the use, by a senior politician that has, at some times, expressed ambitions to lead a Party, of populist language bordering on hate-speech that is either deliberately or carelessly designed to foment discord or, at best, to shock. 

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Mr. Corbyn has been condemned, rightly, for his dismal failure to root out the anti-Semitism that now has deep roots within the Labour Party. By that failure, recognised and regretted by many of my moderate friends within the parliamentary Labour Party, he has demonstrated his lack of fitness to lead and most particularly to govern.  A majority of the voting public may, if the polls are to be believed, want the Burka banned in Britain but it is not a view to which I will subscribe. Mr Johnson may be the darling of the reactionary wing of the Conservative Party, he may have a handful of Neanderthal acolytes within the House of Commons and he will no doubt make a lot of noise in a few weeks time at during the Conference season but he is, quite simply, not now or ever a leader that I would wish to follow or to serve under. There are other and better men and women who, when the time comes, will be truly worthy of support.

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