Bravo Boris

Ever since Boris Johnson resigned as foreign secretary, it was generally assumed that there would — in time — be a dramatic clash with Theresa May. But it was thought that the Prime Minister would pick her battle over a point of principle, perhaps on Europe, rather than over a joke in his Daily Telegraph column. Boris was defending the right of Muslims to wear what they like in public, but added that he thinks niqabs look like letterboxes. The ministerial reaction has been extraordinary, and deeply unedifying.

Boris’s point was that, in banning the niqab, Denmark had passed a surprisingly illiberal piece of legislation — all the more surprising in that it has emerged from a country often viewed as a bastion of liberty. It is not, he argued, the business of the state to lay down the law on what individuals can and cannot wear in public, beyond the demands of public decency.