Yes, I compared Theresa May to an Israeli tank commander. Why is everyone so upset?

I expect all of us have said something we regret at one time or another, but not everyone does so in front of 1.5 million people. That was my misfortune when I was caught off guard by an interviewer for ITN on my way out of a television studio in Westminster on Sunday.

I’d just done a review of the morning’s papers on Murnaghan and was feeling rather chipper on account of the exchange I’d just had with Diane Abbott about Labour’s electoral chances. Live on air, I offered to bet her £100 that Ed Miliband wouldn’t win the election and, to my delight, she refused to take it. ‘I never bet,’ she said. Not exactly a vote of confidence from someone who, until recently, was a key member of Miliband’s leadership team.

Anyway, I was feeling quite relaxed when the woman from ITN asked if I could give her a few words about the recent bust-up between Michael Gove and Theresa May. Wasn’t this another example of the Tory party snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

The whole thing is the Home Secretary’s fault, I said. Michael Gove made some off-the-cuff remark about a minor Home Office official over lunch with some journalists and as soon as Theresa May heard about it she went ballistic. She reacted like some Israeli tank commander on being confronted by a stone-throwing Palestinian. I thought it was quite an amusing analogy, not least because Gove is fanatically pro-Israel. But judging from the reaction I got on Twitter, the humour was lost on most viewers.