Boris’s remarkable ability to infuriate Labour

Today’s Commons ding-dong on the riots that followed Saturday’s march was real, politics of the viscera stuff. The Labour benches were furious about Boris’s comments in today’s Telegraph that ‘Balls and Miliband will feel quietly satisfied by the disorder’ and that they ‘will be content to see the police being unfairly attacked on all sides’. Yvette Cooper was so angry that when she tried to read out this section from Boris’s column that she couldn’t get the words out.

Boris and Yvette, both Balliol graduates, have previous. But it was still striking quite how angrily Cooper heckled May as she refused to condemn Boris’ comments.

It was all further evidence of how Boris gets up Labour noses to an extent that almost no other Tory does. This is actually all to Boris’s advantages as he provokes them into losing their rags and thus the argument.