The story is grotesque, thoroughly misogynistic and illustrates the poverty of political debate in some British tabloids. Sunday, April 24, the Mail on Sunday devotes its “one” to the deputy Angela Rayner, number two of the Labor Party, with this title: “Tories accuse of using strategy Basic Instinct to distract Boris. » In support of the article, a photograph of Mme Rayner, sitting on the opposition benches in the House of Commons, long red hair, black tights and crossed legs. Below, another snapshot, this time of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinctthe famous film of the early 1990s, which transformed the American actress into a sex icon.
The allegations of the members of the conservative party are anonymous, their arguments laughable and even insulting in view of the career and the qualities of repartee of the elected Labor member: ” She [Angela Rayner] knows she can’t compete with the oratorical skills Boris acquired at the Oxford Union [un des clubs les plus sélects de l’Université d’Oxford]but she has other talents – which he does not have”, claims an MP, quoted by Glen Owen, the article’s signer and political editor of the tabloid.
“All because I am a woman”
Born 42 years ago into a very modest background, Angela Rayner fell pregnant at 16, left school without qualifications, but she persevered, trained as a social worker, then revealed herself in the trade union struggle, within Unison, the main body of the British public service. “I am often underestimated. I’m pretty, I have long red hair, many think I’m stupid when they see me for the first time”, she notes in a long portrait dedicated to her by the Guardian in 2012. In 2015, the young woman managed to get elected in Ashton-under-Lyne, a constituency in the Manchester region, before quickly climbing the ladder within the Labor parliamentary group. In recent months, some have even lent him the ambition of wanting to take the place of the leader of the party, Keir Starmer.
These charges are sexist » swiped Angela Rayner about the Mail on Sunday on Twitter. “I am accused of plotting to distract the Prime Minister, to neutralize him, all because I am a woman, I have legs and I wear clothes. Do you see the blackboard. » Alluding to the “partygate” scandal, these parties in Downing Street in the midst of a pandemic, the MP adds: “ Supporters of Boris Johnson no longer know what to invent to try to save his skin. »
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