Angela Rayner hits back at claims of ‘Basic Instinct’ tactics to distract PM

Angela Rayner has said she will not be deterred by “vile lies” after a widely criticised report suggested Conservative MPs believe she crosses and uncrosses her legs during prime minister’s questions to distract Boris Johnson.

The Mail on Sunday reported that unnamed senior Tories had “mischievously” suggested Labour’s deputy leader deploys what it called “a fully clothed parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stone’s infamous scene in the 1992 film Basic Instinct”.

The article quoted a Conservative MP saying: “She knows she can’t compete with Boris’s Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks. She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us on the [Commons] terrace.”

It also contrasted Rayner’s background, as a former care worker who left school at 16, with that of the Old Etonian prime minister.

In a series of furious tweets on Sunday morning, Rayner hit back against the anonymous briefing, saying she was a victim of “sexism and misogyny”.

“I stand accused of a ‘ploy’ to ‘distract’ the helpless PM – by being a woman, having legs and wearing clothes,” Rayner said. She accused Johnson’s allies of “resorting to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin”.

“He and his cheerleaders clearly have a big problem with women in public life. They should be ashamed of themselves. I won’t be letting their vile lies deter me. Their attempts to harass and intimidate me will fail,” she said.

Johnson tweeted on Sunday: “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.”

The Conservative party chair, Oliver Dowden, also rejected the claims, describing them as “totally ludicrous”.

“I like the Mail on Sunday and I enjoy reading it but I think it’s a totally ludicrous story that I don’t recognise,” he said. The former leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom agreed, criticising the “totally unacceptable comments and reporting”.

Rayner last confronted Johnson at prime minister’s questions in January, when Keir Starmer was self-isolating with Covid. She challenged the prime minister over the cost of living crisis, pointing to his previous relaxed stance about inflation and asking: “How did he get it so wrong?”

Rayner sparked controversy at last autumn’s Labour conference for describing the Conservatives during a party event as “homophobic, racist, misogynistic … scum”.

In Basic Instinct, Stone plays a violent psychopathic killer, who in a notorious scene briefly flashes her vulva while being interrogated by a police detective played by Michael Douglas.