Labour now has no choice but to ban the burka

And, embarrassingly for Sir Keir and co, it’s all their own fault

The Government hasn’t realised it yet, but it’s about to get itself into the most stupendously embarrassing tangle. This week ministers have announced that, to help catch criminals on police watchlists, facial recognition technology will now be used all over the country. On high streets throughout Britain, special cameras mounted on vans will scan the faces of pedestrians, and alert the police each time they identify a wanted man or woman.

I suspect that you can already spot the tiny potential flaw in this scheme. But since ministers apparently can’t, let’s be helpful, and spell it out for them.

Facial recognition technology, as you may well have deduced from its name, can only work if it’s possible to see someone’s face. Which means that, for this plan to stand any chance of success, the Government surely needs to ban members of the public from wearing face coverings. Such as, for example, balaclavas and surgical masks.

And oh yes, I almost forgot. The burka.

Which is why I say the Government will soon find itself facing a rather awkward dilemma. Option one: waste vast sums of taxpayers’ money on technology that criminals will be able to evade, simply by covering their faces. Or option two: enrage Muslim voters by doing something that the Green Party, not to mention the Government’s own backbench MPs, will inevitably denounce as Islamophobic, racist, hateful and bigoted. Which option do we suppose this Labour Government will choose?

I don’t know about you, but I reckon I can take a pretty good guess. In fact, now that I look at those two options again, maybe the Government won’t find the dilemma quite as agonising as I suggested. After all, since when have Labour ministers worried about wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money?

On the whole, therefore, I think we may be reasonably confident that my guess is correct. Which means that the facial recognition technology is almost certainly pointless. Then again, at least one good thing may come of it.

Some enterprising film director can treat us to a 21st-century reboot of Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane’s unforgettable comedy from 1990, Nuns on the Run. Except this time, the oafish male criminals will try to evade capture by dressing not in habits, but in an even more effective form of disguise.

Berks in Burkas. Coming soon to a cinema, and indeed a high street, near you.
Why do the Left love shoplifters?

On the other hand, not everyone who’s committed a crime is desperate to hide it. In fact, some people actively boast about it.

Take Jia Tolentino. She’s a 37-year-old Left-wing journalist from New York. And this week, during a New York Times podcast discussion entitled “The Rich Don’t Play By the Rules, So Why Should I?”, she proudly declared that “on several occasions” she has shoplifted from the Whole Foods supermarket chain – and that “I didn’t feel bad about it at all”.

She provided two reasons for her lack of remorse. First, because she’d done it to benefit someone in need (she gave the items she’d pinched to a woman from her “neighbourhood mutual aid group”). And second, because she disapproves of Whole Foods, as in her eyes it’s a nasty rich capitalist corporation, and therefore deserves to be – as she calls it – “microlooted”.

Remarkably, she seems to imagine that most Americans would admire what she did. “Stealing for need or purpose – it’s something that we understand and feel quite friendly toward,” she explained. “And I think if someone were, say, walking out of Whole Foods with an Ikea bag of whatever and giving it to the people sheltering underneath the scaffolding at the jail going up close by in Brooklyn, most people would agree… We love that in America.”

I was intrigued to hear this. Especially because, according to the Daily Mail, Ms Tolentino lives in a five-bedroom house in Brooklyn worth $2.2m (£1.6m). Which would suggest that she’s really rather rich herself.

So does that mean I’m entitled to go and “microloot” her house?

After all, if I stole all her most valuable possessions, I could give them to the people sheltering underneath the scaffolding at the jail going up close by in Brooklyn. That would plainly constitute “stealing for need or purpose”, so she would presumably applaud my noble effort to reduce inequality, and thank me for striking such a righteous blow against the over-privileged.

I can picture it now. “Oh, Mr Deacon, it’s so inspiring to see you stealing everything I own so that you can give it all to a pack of vagrants who will sell it to buy crack. We love that in America. Say, that Ikea bag you’ve stuffed with my family’s laptops, phones, games consoles and jewellery sure looks heavy. Let me help you carry it.”

Come to think of it, maybe it’s not just her possessions that I should redistribute. In our own country we have ever-soaring numbers of asylum seekers in urgent need of accommodation. And, although I’m sure they’re not ungrateful to be given a hotel room in Scunthorpe or Stoke, I bet they’d much prefer a $2.2m house in New York.