Boris has friends

Tory grandees are clearly livid with Boris Johnson over his remarks about some Muslim women’s attire. Not because they don’t agree with him – surely Boris’s antennae aren’t that out of sync – but because his comments have knocked Labour’s ‘anti-semitism’ garbage off the top slot. Even the Guardian had to relegate the latest musings of Dame Margaret Hodge into a secondary place. On the Today programme this morning the stand-out moment for me was when ‘Lord’ Eric Pickles, in full smoothy-chops mode described Boris as his friend but . . . his language was out of line, and by the way this couldn’t be compared with Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech. I love this use of the non-comparison comparison. Could it be called a false flag comparison? Who else actually made the comparison? The point is to plant the thought in people’s heads. I’m not sure Eric really is Boris’s friend after all.