A row exploded on GB News last night as guests discussed Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin’s claim that burqa’s should be banned in Britain. Earlier in the day, Pochin had asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer during PMQs, whether he believed that the burqa should be banned.
She said: “Given the prime minister’s desire to strengthen strategic alignment with our European neighbours, will he, in the interests of public safety, follow the lead of France, Denmark, Belgium and others and ban the burqa?” Starmer refused to answer the question, instead focusing on Reform’s policies and pointing to the fact that Pochin had been a Conservative MP during Liz Truss’s mini-budget. Reform UK later distanced itself from the question, insisting that a burqa ban was not “party policy”.
Despite not being engaged with in the chamber, the question did provoke heated discussions online and in TV studios.
Discussing the matter with Martin Daubney on GB News, political commentator Fahima Mahomed accused Pochin of being racist after asking the question.
She said: “When it comes to Sarah Pochin, talking as a female MP for the first time where she could have raised issues with regards to domestic violence, mental health in women’s prisons, she picks on the European far-right nationalists and wanted to copy them in British, not secular Government.”
She later added: “What she’s talking about is actual racism, discrimination and against a particular group. It’s against other women too.”
Several countries across Europe have banned the wearing of face-coverings in public to various degrees, a point made by Daubney to counter the idea that Pochin’s suggestion was plucked from the far-right.
He said: “One of the points raised by all these nations is, ‘we have a multiculturalism problem’. We have silos in British cities where we have scant and lowering levels of cultural integration. One way to removing those barriers could be to remove the Burqa.”
Mahomed countered: “That’s removing religious identity. That’s coercion. That’s telling someone what to wear.
“When another woman is bringing someone down for no particular reason, there has been no terrorism from these women, they can barely run, let alone wage war in these outfits.
“Some countries have taken away the Christian symbol and the Jewish Kippah, shall we do that as well?”
