So Boris is in trouble again?

I am not sure what to make of Boris Johnson's latest comments on the clothing of some Muslim women. It is even more confusing for me now because two of my female Muslim friends agree with him. They may not have put it in quite the same way but they tell me they have "had enough" of the dress codes that they are expected to abide by at home.
They are students here and they revel in the freedom to wear what they want to wear. 
    "I don't want to stand out," one of them told me yesterday. 
I know the feeling. 
    "And our clothes there are so stuffy Cat! You have no idea. My father insists on at least the abaya because his father tells him we must."
When M.... arrived here she was wearing a long dress with long sleeves and her hijab. I remember seeing her like this the day after she arrived. Eighteen months later she is wearing jeans, a fleece top and a scarf that only partially covers her hair.  It isn't my influence but the influence of her housemates.  
They dress "properly" only to go to the mosque. The rest of the time I suppose they endeavour to blend in. It reminds me of the time when women used to go to church on Sunday wearing a hat and gloves. I suppose there are women who still do that but even our friend P..., a nun, doesn't do it any more. She might even be wearing trousers "because there's no heating".  She doesn't own a traditional habit any more.
I have been asked my view about the various Muslim dress codes more than once. My feeling is that nobody - male as well as female - should deliberately dress provocatively. I don't think it is appropriate to wear your bathers but nothing else on the train even if you are going to the beach or - worse - coming home and they are still damp. At the same time I don't think burqas are healthy or necessary. They certainly aren't required by the Koran.
Those things are extremes. 
The Senior Cat and I once knew someone, now deceased, who made his living by repairing rental properties.  He would doors, windows, locks and other "small" jobs. On one occasion he had to go to a property to repair a window. The woman who answered the door was wearing a burqa...because she had answered the door to a man she did not know.
There was one problem with this. R....was getting very deaf by then. He relied heavily on being able to see what people were saying to him. He explained this to the woman.
Later he told us,
     "She stood there and just stared at me. I was about to tell her I would come back when her husband was home when she invited me in with a gesture."
He went to do the job he had been asked to do. When he had finished and was about to leave he went to find her. He found her waiting for him. She had made him tea and offered him home made biscuits.
And she had taken her burqa off. She was wearing the hijab but otherwise was dressed in a way he considered normal. She apparently offered her apologies to him in her limited English.
I often wonder what she did later, whether she told her husband, whether she continued to answer the door wearing her burqa and so on. 
And it made me think. A dress code shouldn't cut you off from other people.