Laugh off Stone-age misogyny
JALL THIS week I’ve been asking myself has it come to this? Has the feminist drive for equal pay, equal opportunity, and all the other important stuff women have campaigned for over the last 50-odd years, resulted in the kind of Victorian prudery which used to cover up table legs with long cloths because they were suggestive?
Such an almighty fuss about a crude Basic Instinct gag. Angela Rayner, I would suggest, is not remotely prudish, and a clever northern lass like her is not going to have a fit of the vapours because some creep makes an adolescent joke about a notorious cross-legged moment, made fanous by Sharon Stone, right.
Angela has very fine legs (sorry Ange, but I’m female, and allowed to say that). She’s an attractive woman, so colleagues are going to notice her and fancy her, and since most MPs are male, lumpen and think they’re still at boarding school, they’ll make stupid vulgar cracks about Angela’s assets.
They’re scared to death of clever women so if they get the chance to titter about her legs with their boorish mates it makes them feel superior, instead of the crass idiots they are. But for goodness’ sake this isn’t a matter for the Speaker to get all Mary Whitehouse about.
Women MPs can surely give as good as they get. And someone who takes as much pride in her appearance as Rayner is following in the footsteps of the redoubtable Barbara Castle, another Labour redhead who wouldn’t step into the chamber without perfect hair and full make-up.
My dad didn’t half fancy her.And boy, was she clever... and fearsome. More than a match for any man.
Angela Rayner is an MP to watch, and not just because she’s Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. She’s striking, clever, passionate and confident (perhaps too much at times, but a woman in politics needs all the sass she can muster).
If she curbs her inner fishwife she’s got the charisma to go far. I’d tell her to laugh off those pathetic cracks.The joke’s not on you love, it’s on the oafs around you in the Commons and, God help us, who are supposed to be running the country.