Boris Johnson backs Angela Rayner over ‘deplorable’ Basic Instinct slur

Boris Johnson has put party rivalries to one side to condemn the “deplorable misogyny” in a newspaper article about Labour’s Angela Rayner.

The Mail on Sunday reported that unnamed Tory MPs had “mischievously suggested” that the opposition party’s deputy leader “likes to distract” the prime minister when he addresses the Commons by crossing and uncrossing her legs. The paper described the alleged ploy as “a fully-clothed Parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stone's infamous scene in the 1992 film Basic Instinct”.

A Conservative MP was reported to have said: “She knows she can’t compete with Boris's Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The PM swiftly distanced himself from the allegations, which triggered anger from across the political spectrum. Johnson tweeted: “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 Downing Street source told the BBC that the Tory leader had contacted Rayner privately by text message to reiterate those sentiments.

Rayner had earlier lashed out at his party over the claims. In a Twitter post condemning the Sunday paper’s “gutter journalism”, she wrote that Johnson’s “cheerleaders have resorted to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin”.

Labour leader Keir Starmer said that “the sexism and misogyny peddled by the Tories is a disgraceful new low from a party mired in scandal and chaos”.

Tory MP Caroline Nokes joined Johnson in condemning the article, which she described on LBC radio as a “dirty little story”.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that the row was “a reminder of the deep misogyny women face every day”.