As somoeone who, for my sins, has rewkod for the UK immigration authorities for several years, I have a fair to middling understanding of the European Convention of Human Rights. While refusing citizenship is one thing, any decision to deny this man residence in France with his French wife, on the basis of a dislike of the niqab, is unlikely to stand up at the European Court. If this practice becomes routine, I would not doubt that a test case will end up there fairly swiftly. I really don't think the liberal justices of strasbourg will find such a decision to be in pursuit of a legitimate aim , and would likely quash it as an unlawful breach of their Article 8 rights to family and private life.An argument could certianly be made for the protection of the europeaness' of French society being a legitimate aim in itself, and I welcome the French governments decision to test the water on this. I hope they succeed, as it may give my own employers courage to follow a similar path. We are a very tolerant society on the whole, certainly more so than France (where I lived for two years, including 6 months in the Islamic metropolis of Marseille), and I just can't see this ever happening here. But the main reason why Britian is not more stringent in immigration policy (and there are many who would suggest we already go too far), despite a general public desire for us to be so, is because we work within the confines of the ECHR. France seems far more ready to challenge the boundaries of the convention than HMG, and far more ready to ignore it when it suits them!If the in-coming Tory government are going to be as tough on immigration as they would like the electorate to think, then they are going to need to pull out of the ECHR. I'll believe that when I see it.