“When Straw asks his women constituents if they might remove their veils during interviews – he does not insist – he was reacting like any normal person to conversing with someone in a mask. To a westerner such conversation is rude. If Muslim women, and it is a tiny number, cannot understand this, it is reasonable to ask why they want to live in Britain…..

“What to a Londoner is an exotic sight on the other side of the street, in the Midlands or northwest is a declaration of apartheid. It announces a group of newcomers who will integrate legally but not culturally, commercially but not socially…. Those who claim such hospitality owe some duty of respect to their hosts, or at the very least cannot complain if the hosts object.”

Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times, 8 October 2006

Jenkins is, of course, such an expert on the subect that he can’t tell a burqa from a niqab.