On April 23, one of Britain’s most widely read newspapers, The Mail on Sunday (MoS), published a sexist and classist attack on Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the Labor Party.
The article, headlined “Conservatives accuse Angela Rayner of base instinct ploy to distract Boris”, claimed that Rayner provocatively crosses and uncrosses her legs in the House of Commons to put Prime Minister Boris Johnson “out of the way”. .
Conservative MPs quoted anonymously in the article claimed that Rayner used that tactic because he could not compete with Johnson’s “Oxford Union debate training” with his “comprehensive school” education. The article, illustrated with a photo of Sharon Stone in a scene from the 1992 neo-noir thriller Basic Instinct, also described the exchanges between Rayner and Johnson in the House of Commons as “flirtatious”.
Shortly after the article was published, Rayner condemned his “perverted and desperate smears” in a series of tweets.
“The potted biography is given: my comprehensive upbringing, my experience as a caregiver, my family, my class, my background,” she wrote, “the implication is clear.” She went on to argue that the article shows that the prime minister and her cheerleaders “clearly have a big problem with women in public life.”
Rayner’s Labor Party colleagues and countless public figures criticized the article as “baseless”. As other media organizations picked up the story and it became clear that British public opinion was with Rayner, the Conservatives also moved to distance themselves from her.
Ultimately, Johnson stepped forward to declare on Twitter that as much as he disagrees with Rayner on “almost every political issue,” he respects her as an MP and “deplores the misogyny directed against her anonymously.”
But Johnson’s words did little to defuse tensions, and not just because his culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, shared the same tweet just 15 minutes later, showing the prime minister’s statement to be nothing more than an empty PR exercise. .
Indeed, carefully crafted words copied and pasted into the Twitter feedlines of prominent politicians cannot repair the damage caused by the sexist and classist rhetoric pushed by a major national newspaper, nor can they change the misogynistic mindset of the Conservative MPs quoted in the history.
After all, the MoS story about Rayner’s legs was not an anomaly but a natural consequence of the systemic misogyny and classism of the Conservative Party and the media organizations that are affiliated with it.
Over the years, countless Conservative MPs, journalists and commentators have openly and proudly displayed their sexism and classism, publicly making derogatory comments about women and the working class. MP Jacob Rees Mogg, for example, once suggested that those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tragedy was missing “common sense” and on another occasion he claimed that women who terminate a pregnancy after rape were committing a “second wrong“.
Johnson himself has never made any effort to hide what he thinks of working-class women. In a 1995 article for the Spectator, for example, he argued that children of single mothers were “poorly raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate.” In another article published in the same year, he claimed that “conceited and irresponsible women” had a “natural desire” to become pregnant. In a 2005 article for The Telegraph, he described the poorest 20 percent of society as being made up of “chavs, losers, thieves and drug addicts.”
The disdain that conservative politicians like Johnson and Rees-Mogg clearly have for the working class and women has repeatedly translated into policy. The Johnson administration recently rejected calls to make misogyny a hate crime, despite activists and pundits arguing such a move would address prejudice, reduce crime and challenge the normalization of toxic attitudes toward women in public life. .
Last month, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a rise in the national insurance threshold, crippling working-class Britons who had already been struggling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, while doing his best to help elites. As the. And from the MoS and its sister paper The Daily Mail to The Telegraph, Britain’s Conservative media have always supported, promoted and legitimized the anti-women and anti-working class policies of Conservative governments.
So it’s no wonder the MoS published a misogynistic article about Rayner, a 42-year-old working-class woman who has never had a problem defending herself against men with “Oxford Union debate training” in the House. of the Commons.
However, this attempt to discredit and humiliate a prominent working-class woman in public life should not be ignored or normalized. After all, this misogynistic and classist attack was a sign of a larger problem: the establishment’s commitment to keeping the working class, and especially working class women, out of politics and public life in general.
I am a working class woman. I have witnessed firsthand how women like me in this country are discouraged from participating in politics. How we are made to believe in politics is too complicated for us to understand with our “whole school education.” As we are led to believe that we are not intelligent enough to understand, much less make decisions about the political and economic direction of the country, we often become indifferent to matters as a kind of defense mechanism. Too many times I have heard girls from the same background as mine suggest that they are not smart enough to get involved in politics or that they feel a sense of indifference towards the subject despite being among one of the cohorts most affected by the decisions made in the Parlament.
But Angela Rayner, who has risen to the highest echelons of British politics without any “Oxford Union debate training” and with a background not in finance or journalism but in care work, shows us that this has no why be the case.
And that is why we must not ignore the sexist and classist attacks against them aimed at undermining their achievements and successes.
Rayner herself warned of the effect The Mail on Sunday article may have on working-class women who aspire to enter politics.
“I hope this experience does not discourage a single person like me, with a background like mine, from aspiring to participate in public life,” he wrote in a tweet. “That would break my heart.”
“We need more people in politics with backgrounds like mine, and less as a hobby to help their peers.”
The MoS article was just the latest attempt by the Conservative establishment to ensure that British politics remains dominated by old Etonians like Johnson. Unable to find fault with Rayner’s performance in the House of Commons, the unnamed Conservative MPs decided to insult her simply for existing as a working-class woman in that space. It was an attack not just on Rayner but on all working class women in the country and should be treated as such. But the real question we need to ask ourselves now is why are Conservatives so afraid of working-class women in politics?
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.