Oh, do stop playing the misogyny card, Angela —it’s not true
TLET’S hope the Just Stop Oil morons who glued themselves to service station petrol pumps and smashed them with hammers are superglued into jail cells. I’m left wondering how they got around the M25 in the first place. Presumably they walked.
HIS column made a small observation on January 8 about Angela Rayner after I had watched her performing across the dispatch box at Prime Minister’s Questions.
‘No wonder Boris Johnson got in a fluster at this week’s PMQ’s when confronted by Angela Rayner, standing in for Sir Keir Starmer,’ I wrote. ‘Wearing a chic dress that showed off her thighs, the Labour Deputy Leader was channelling her inner Sharon Stone. Boris has always had a tendresse for women with basic instincts.’
Now, it transpires that about a week later on the booze-fuelled terrace of the Commons, Rayner was seen by at least four MPs joking about her ‘Sharon Stone’ ploy to disarm the PM. Could it be that she had read my article and was enjoying being portrayed as a sexy politician and compared with a Hollywood star?
Whatever the case, during a jovial podcast a week later with the comedian Matt Forde, she went on to joke about deliberately crossing and uncrossing her legs and ‘giving the PM a flash’ — talking in such crude terms they cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.
‘There is a touch of misogyny in it,’ she said. ‘Did you see the meme on Sharon Stone like I was doing that in PMQs?’ (No, none of us did Ange — not until you mentioned it.) Fast
forward three months and the woman who revelled in her new sexy Sharon Stone persona is backpedalling furiously while playing the misogyny card for all its worth.
She appeared on ITV’s Lorraine show, wearing a modest trouser suit, saying she doesn’t want to be judged by what she wears but who she really is, a serious politician. Her claims over the way she says she has been demeaned have launched a tsunami of furious complaints from the woke brigade, claiming that Parliament is full of men who treat women badly.
Having worked there for decades, I know that is not true. The vast majority of male MPs are decent. Yes, there still exists a tiny number of sexist dinosaur MPs, but to tar all men with the same brush is just wrong. Thanks to Rayner, charges of woman-hating are now being thrown about like confetti.
Angela Rayner is a clever and talented politician who doesn’t need curly hair extensions and split skirts to pack a punch. Describing her as sexy when she chooses to flash her enviable legs is not misogynistic, it’s the simple truth.