IT’S a strange day indeed when you find yourself agreeing wholeheartedly with the French.

Perhaps I’m coming down with something. Still, notwithstanding their peculiar culinary habits, I must side with our continental cousins when it comes to banning the public wearing of the face veil known as the ‘niqab’.

The ban is not, as some would have it, an attack on Muslims, their religion or their way of life or even a symptom of aggressive secularisation.

Ordinarily, being able to dress how you want is a perk of the West where such freedoms are now considered sacrosanct. But what has wearing this mobile prison to do with freedom?

The niqab obscures our main point of connection with another human being – their face. We learn so much about a person from their face that to conceal it altogether is abhorrent.

We are hard-wired through millennia of evolution to decipher the tiniest micro-expression, subconsciously gauging the emotions and intentions of others. The very survival of our ancestors depended on their ability to read faces accurately and quickly.

This is why I find masks of any description sinister. It makes this task almost impossible. This is no doubt why a judge in a British court recently ordered a woman to remove the niqab while giving evidence.

Masks serve one main purpose – to conceal the identity of the wearer, sometimes for nefarious means.

Defenders of the niqab may say this oppressive garment protects women from the lustful glances of leering men.

If this is the case then surely it is the lecherous attitudes of men that need to be urgently addressed, not the contents of a woman’s wardrobe.

There is also a massive double standard at work here. If I was working in a shop or for that matter a bank, I wouldn’t serve someone wearing a motorbike helmet or a Halloween mask.

If I worked behind a supermarket checkout I wouldn’t happily bag a customer’s bananas while they were wearing a balaclava.

Why should we bend the rules for Muslims? This is not a crass analogy either. Traditional Muslim female dress has been used by men in robberies. Of course the PC brigade will now be putting on their own masks of habitual smugness and derision. “Connell is a bigot and a goose-stepping racist – sack him, gag him, burn him at the stake,” they will shriek. But surely in a fair country which promotes equality we should have the same rules for everyone.

Muslims need to embrace the freedoms and values of Britain.

Equally, British people should learn more about moderate Muslims and their way of life. After all, you don’t tend to see Muslim women having legions of children out of wedlock or falling over drunk in the street, wearing little more than a spangly belt and a skimpy pair of knickers, do you?