If you have got it, Theresa, flaunt it (power, I mean)

WHAT side were you on in the great debate then? Did you think, for crying in a bucket, we all have breasts, even the Home Secretary has a pair, nothing to see here, do jog on everyone and focus on the red ink in the Budget Statement and not Mrs May’s red lace bra?

Or did you think – just as you were trying to concentrate on the rising debt to GDP ratio – OMG, what was Theresa May thinking when she got dressed on Budget Day in a revealing outfit more suited to a VIP Box at the Cheltenham races?

She must have known that she would be sitting to the right of the Chancellor when it came to the pictures, like a couple of TV hosts. The convention on the small screen, of course, dictates that a pair of presenters comprises a pouchy bloke in suit on left plus younger filly in a bright, tight body-con dress to his right.

(I say ‘of course’ because last week’s other serious controversy – apart from ‘Boom and Bust’ – was why producers promoted newbie BBC Breakfast presenter Dan Walker to Bill Turnbull’s old place on the sofa rather than give more senior presenter Louise Minchin pole position.)

I mention the televisual grammar as I think it explains what Mrs May was thinking when she dressed that morning. Her role last week was to be the official ‘ screen wife’ of the Chancellor, and she knew it and she worked it. She must have known the eyes of the world would be on her as the boy wizard Oz-borne magicked away deficits in time for elections, slapped on sugar taxes, and set our schools free. She must have known that a female stills photographer, Jessica Taylor, was in the chamber for the first time, too, snapping away.

I contend Mrs May is far too clever, canny and experienced a politician to have had a wardrobe malfunction. She is far too smart – she wore a scarlet plunger last year, too – not to realise that flashing her puppies was going to be a brilliant ‘dead cat’ style distraction (I’m always aware when I’ve got the ‘girls’ out, as are all the women I’ve consulted), and help lead the eye away from the £56billion black hole in the public finances. Someone tweeted in awe: ‘I think Theresa May may have just broke the internet.’

Ha ha. She didn’t. She was just a woman doing her job in a lowcut top, and the reason I am risking the wrath of the sisterhood in what I’m about to say is because I admire Mrs May and all who sail in her.

IN FACT, we need many more Mrs Mays in public life. Women who are valued not for what they look like, but what they say and do. And, frankly, we need far fewer women like those hideous drunken slatterns (© Littlejohn) who got their boobs out at Cheltenham, and who also graced the newspapers last week.

The difference between the flesh on display in the Commons and in the Cotswolds is this, though, and it is important.

Mrs May, the Home Secretary, is the most powerful woman in the country. We have to take her seriously no matter what she wears. She bosses us all. She could wear a basque and fishnets in the Speaker’s Chair, and we would still rate her. Or I would.

But very few women can command such automatic respect from the public and their peers as Theresa May does.

I would still argue that, if women do not want to be treated as sex objects by tabloids and Twitter, or objectified by anyone, they should keep their secondary sexual characteristics under wraps in public if possible. For last week the Cheltenham slappers and the Home Secretary got in the papers… for their breasts.

Er… congratulations, ladies.