Boris Johnson branded 'pound shop Trump' after claiming women in burqas 'look like bank robbers'
4 min read
Boris Johnson has been branded a "pound shop Donald Trump" after he said Muslim women who wear burkas looked like bank robbers and letter boxes.
The former Foreign Secretary made the incendiary comments as he argued MPs, businesses and universities should have the right to crack down on full-face veils - but he stopped short of calling for an outright ban.
But Labour MPs tore into the Uxbridge MP, with one reporting him to equalities watchdogs.
In a column for the Telegraph, Mr Johnson said it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes”.
“If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly,” he argued.
“If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct.”
But Labour MP David Lammy said: “Our pound-shop Donald Trump is fanning the flames of Islamophobia to propel his grubby electoral ambitions.”
Meanwhile Labour MP Jess Phillips reported the comments to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
She told PoliticsHome: “Boris is playing dog whistle to appeal to his base. He knows exactly what he is doing.
“Unfortunately hatred and fear are political tools for the lazy and the desperate, but they work.
“He might think it's oppressive to wear a burka, but he helps no oppressed woman by likening them to a criminal.”
Shadow equalities minister Naz Shah told PoliticsHome: “Boris Johnson's latest racist insults can not be laughed off, like they often are. Saying Muslim women look like letterboxes, comparing them to bank robbers and describing Islam as a "problem" was a calculated attack and published in a national newspaper.
"Theresa May must condemn this blatant Islamophobia and Boris Johnson must apologise.”
Her Labour colleague Stella Creasy weighed in by calling the former London mayor “a racist and misogynist”.
Mr Johnson was previously condemned during the EU referendum for suggesting then-US president Barack Obama may have an “ancestral dislike” of the UK since he is “part-Kenyan”.
And in 2002 he wrote a column in which he described those from Commonwealth nations as “flag-waving piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”.
His latest comments come after senior Tories were forced to deny the party has a problem with Islamophobia after a series of scandals involving local figures.
A spokesman for Theresa May said: "The longstanding government position on this is clear - we do not support a ban on the wearing of the veil in public. Such a prescriptive approach would be out of keeping with British values such as religious tolerance and gender equality."
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