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Not really. It's exactly what you would expect given the background and party of the MP concerned, and the newspaper concerned. Mercer was appealing to his core, and his core's paper of choice responded to his whistle.

Exactly the same happens on the other side of the House as well, should anybody assume I'm making an anti-Tory point. How often have we seen a Labour MP getting on a soap box, then for the Guardian to trumpet an eye-catching headline?

I think this just is how politics and the media works. The whiff of outrage, howsoever contrived, is never a bad thing for the person fanning it, or the commercial organisation reporting it.