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Women wearing the burqa resemble "letterboxes" and "look like a bank robber", Boris Johnson suggested today.

The MP - who until weeks ago was Britain's top diplomat - was branded a "pound-shop Donald Trump fanning the flames of Islamophobia" after his comparison in a pitch to the Tory faithful.

Branding the religious symbol "oppressive", he claimed: "It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes."