Kathy Sheridan: Imagine if Boris Johnson is right about the burqa?

Dogwhistle signal sent not by hack or clown but by former foreign secretary

• Kathy Sheridan
• The Irish Times

Watching Boris Johnson offer mugs of tea to door-stepping journalists outside his country home was the latest in a series of “shoot me now” modern political vignettes.

This was not about something jolly like an extra-marital fling or some private fetish. His comparison of burqa-wearing women’s appearance to letterboxes and bank robbers had become the number-one story in Britain.

It may surprise the many who failed to read his Daily Telegraph column but he argued against a ban on the full-face veil. Leaving aside his…

• Kathy Sheridan: Imagine…