Boris Johnson writes to Angela Rayner to insist ‘misogynistic’ claims were not in his name

Boris Johnson has written to Angela Rayner to insist “misogynistic” claims reportedly made about her by an unidentified Tory MP were not in his name. According to The Daily Telegraph, the Prime Minister sent the deputy Labour leader a letter yesterday (Sunday) in response to a report in The Mail on Sunday which has been condemned by Tory and Labour MPs alike.

Mr Johnson reportedly moved to assure Ms Rayner in the private letter that the comments were “not in his name”, expressing his sympathy over the anonymous attack. The article claimed that an unnamed Tory MP had told the newspaper Ms Rayner crossed and uncrossed her legs on the Labour front bench during Prime Minister’s Questions in an attempt to distract Mr Johnson.

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The paper likened the claims to a scene from the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct and said she was trying to put the PM “off his stride”. Ms Rayner yesterday called the story “desperate” and “perverted” and quickly received solidarity from across the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister was among those to publicly condemn the claims on Twitter. “As much as I disagree with (Ms) Rayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today,” he wrote.

Senior ministers followed suit in condemning the claims. While Treasury minister Simon Clarke retweeted Mr Johnson’s message, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries posted the same tweet as the PM. Yesterday evening, the Tory chairman of Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, Caroline Nokes, revealed she had written to Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, to suggest the journalist who wrote