UK’s Labour Party Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner has been accused of trying to “distract” and throw Prime Minister Boris Johnson “off his stride” when she sat across from him in the House of Commons recently during debates, crossing and uncrossing her legs.
An anonymous Conservative lawmaker was quoted in The Mail on Sunday claiming Rayner’s actions were “a fully-clothed Parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stone’s infamous scene in the 1992 film ‘Basic Instinct’.”
In the film, Stone’s character, an attractive, sexually confident crime novelist suspected of murdering her boyfriend, flirtatiously alternates between crossing and uncrossing her legs while being interrogated by five male detectives.
“All is fair in love, war and Commons duels with Boris Johnson, if the claims of Tory MPs are to be believed,” the article explained.
“Conservatives have claimed that Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner likes to put Mr Johnson ‘off his stride’ in the chamber by crossing and uncrossing her legs when they clash at Prime Minister’s Questions.”
Rayner, 42, took to Twitter to respond to “Boris Johnson’s cheerleaders” and their use of “desperate, perverted smears.”
“I stand accused of a ‘ploy’ to “distract” the helpless PM – by being a woman, having legs and wearing clothes,” she wrote.
“Women in politics face sexism and misogyny every day — and I’m no different.”
Johnson has condemned the article, which he called “the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe” and writing on Twitter: “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.”
A number of prominent female leaders have criticised the sexist remarks published in The Mail on Sunday, which were part of a page 5 lead story that included an image of Rayner sitting with her legs crossed opposite a still of Sharon Stone from that infamous interrogation scene.
Labour legislator and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves hopes the article will encourage more people to “call out this misogyny and sexism for what it is (so) that we get some change, because Angela and no other MP should have to put up with this sort of rubbish.”
“It’s a great sadness that I’m not surprised,” she said. “This sort of sexism and misogyny is the sort of rubbish that female MPs and also female staffers in the House of Commons have to put up with every single day.”
“And when I hear a minister just now say I haven’t heard this sort of thing before, talk to your female colleagues, talk to the women who work in your office because a lot of them would have experienced this sort of thing.”
TalkTV political editor Kate McCann tweeted: “You see all those female MPs and journalists tweeting their rage at this story? It’s because nearly every single one of us has experienced something like this in the course of doing our jobs – often repeatedly – and we are utterly, utterly sick of it.”
Health Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted: “No woman in politics should have to put up with this,” while Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, the leader of Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, said she has requested Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, to confiscate the newspaper’s political editor’s parliamentary Lobby pass.
The political editor at The Mail on Sunday, Glen Owen, is now facing questions over whether his Lobby pass should be removed.