Labour Party deputy leader Angela Rayner has hit out at “sexism and misogyny” in politics, as a storm of criticism erupted after a newspaper reported that she crosses and uncrosses her legs during prime minister’s questions to distract British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Cabinet ministers including Johnson himself, and lawmakers from across the House of Commons condemned the Mail on Sunday report, which House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee Chair Caroline Nokes, a Conservative, called a “dirty little story.”
The paper reported that unnamed senior Conservative lawmakers had “mischievously” suggested that Rayner deploys what it called “a fully clothed parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stone’s infamous scene in the 1992 film Basic Instinct.”
Photo: AP
The article quoted a Conservative lawmaker saying: “She knows she can’t compete with Boris’ Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks. She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us on the [House of Commons] terrace.”
It also contrasted Rayner’s background, as a former care worker who left school at 16, with that of the Old Etonian prime minister.
Rayner is widely regarded as performing strongly when she stands in for the Labour Party leader Keir Starmer against Johnson.
Nokes told radio station LBC that the Mail on Sunday had a “long track record of reporting misogynistic stories about female MPs.”
She said she had contacted the House of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle to ask whether the story’s author, Mail on Sunday political editor Glen Owen, should have his parliamentary lobby pass revoked — and suggested her committee could examine sexism in political reporting.
Owen declined to comment.
In a series of furious posts on Twitter on Sunday, Rayner hit back against the anonymous briefing, saying she was a victim of “sexism and misogyny.”
“I stand accused of a ‘ploy’ to ‘distract’ the helpless PM — by being a woman, having legs and wearing clothes,” Rayner wrote.
She accused Johnson’s allies of “resorting to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin.”
“He and his cheerleaders clearly have a big problem with women in public life. They should be ashamed of themselves. I won’t be letting their vile lies deter me. Their attempts to harass and intimidate me will fail,” she wrote.
“As much as I disagree with Angela Rayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today,” Johnson wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Reports on Sunday night said that Johnson had contacted Rayner earlier on Sunday insisting the “misogynistic” claims were deplorable and not made in his name.
Rayner sparked controversy at last year’s Labour Party conference for describing the Conservatives during a party event as “homophobic, racist, misogynistic scum.”
In Basic Instinct, Stone plays a violent psychopathic killer, who in its best-remembered scene briefly flashes her vulva while being interrogated by a police detective played by Michael Douglas.
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