The UK Independence Party is to call for a ban on the burka and the niqab — the Islamic cloak that covers women from head to toe and the mask that conceals most of the face — claiming they affront British values. The policy, which a number of European countries are also debating, is an attempt by UKIP to broaden its appeal and address the concerns of disaffected white working-class voters.

UKIP would be the first national party to call for a total ban on burkas, though the far-Right BNP believes they should be banned from schools.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the leader of UKIP, said yesterday: “We are taking expert advice on how we could do it. It makes sense to ban the burka — or anything which conceals a woman’s face — in public buildings. But we want to make it possible to ban them in private buildings. It isn’t right that you can’t see someone’s face in an airport.”

He explained that UKIP wanted to bring to the fore the issue of the increasing influence of Sharia in Britain: “We are not Muslim bashing, but this is incompatible with Britain’s values of freedom and democracy.”

He’ll start claiming to have Muslim friends next. I don’t like the burka or niqab either. They irritate my sense of equality, I feel they’re an exercise is misogyny, and their basis in Islam is open to interpretation. But I’m well aware that Britain’s real values of freedom and democracy are based around people being allowed to live their lives as they choose. If a Muslim woman feels the cultural need to cover her entire body in a public space she should be as allowed to, as say any other woman would be to wear the most immodest clothing. Not Muslim bashing? Of course the rotten little racist is. The country’s no more at risk from Sharia law than from imminent Nazi German invasion.

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