Boris to unleash ‘terror’ on Tory MP who made Rayner claim

BORIS Johnson has vowed to discipline any Tory MP found responsible for making a controversial claim that Angela Rayner uses her legs to distract him in the Commons.

Mr Johnson condemned the accusation against Labour’s deputy leader as ‘misogynistic tripe’.

And he said any Tory MP found to have spread the story would face ‘the terrors of the earth’.

Conservative sources told The Mail on Sunday that Miss Rayner liked to put the Prime Minister ‘off his stride’ by crossing and uncrossing her legs while sat opposite him in the Commons.

A Tory MP told the newspaper: ‘She knows she can’t compete with Boris’s Oxford Union training but she has other skills which he lacks.

‘She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us on the [Commons] terrace.’ The claim sparked widespread condemnation at Westminster.

The PM wrote directly to Mrs Rayner, 42, to make clear the claim did not reflect his views.

Mrs Rayner described the claims as

‘Demeaning and offensive to women’

‘desperate, perverted smears.’ The Speaker of the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, yesterday said that he was summoning The Mail on Sunday’s editor, the paper’s political editor and the Press Gallery chairman Andrew Woodcock ‘to discuss this issue affecting our parliamentary community’.

The Speaker told MPs that press freedom was ‘one of the building blocks of our democracy’.

But he said that the claim about Mrs Rayner was ‘demeaning and offensive to women in Parliament’ and could ‘deter women who might be considering standing for election’.

Former Labour minister Kate Hoey said the claim about Mrs Rayner was ‘ridiculous’ but said it was vital to defend the free press.

The independent peer told GB News: ‘The whole thing is a storm in a teacup, complete nonsense, and the Speaker should not be getting involved at all.’

Downing Street said the decision to call in the senior journalists was ‘a matter for the Speaker’ but said Sir Lindsay had ‘talked about respecting media freedom, which is something the Prime Minister is very passionate about’.