Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader, told BBC Radio Scotland this morning that the sexism directed at Angela Rayner in the Mail on Sunday article was an extreme example of what women in politics have to put up with all the time. She said:
I think this is definitely a particularly egregious example, and the idea that Angela Rayner is defeating Boris Johnson’s Oxford-based debating skills with the power of her legs alone is just a nonsense, and it’s laughable, but it’s an example of the extreme misogyny that women face in politics every single day.
You’re just hearing about this particular example because Angela Rayner is senior enough to have power and agency to call it out and demand that there are consequences for what has happened.
But for a lot of women, they just have to quietly put up with comments like this on a day-by-day basis.
Nadine Dorries accuses Rees-Mogg of ‘Dickensian’ approach to civil servants working from home
Jacob Rees-Mogg is at the centre of a Cabinet row over his drive to get civil servants back at their desks, PA Media reports. Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, has compared him to Scrooge, saying his approach to civil servants working from home is “Dickensian”. PA says:
Dorries accused Rees-Mogg, the minister responsible for government efficiency, of a “Dickensian” approach to the issue.
Rees-Mogg has written to cabinet ministers calling on them to issue a clear message to staff about a “rapid return to the office” and has been leaving notes in empty Whitehall workspaces with the message: “I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.”
PA goes on:
The Times reported that Dorries’ response was highly critical of Rees-Mogg’s approach.
Rees-Mogg presented figures to cabinet last week showing that some government departments were using as little as 25% of office capacity in early April – the figure for Dorries’ Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was 43%.
Dorries told him his letter to government departments brought to mind “images of burning tallow, rheumy eyes and Marley’s ghost” – a reference to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
She said: “There’s a whiff of something Dickensian about it. Why are we measuring bodies behind desks? Why aren’t we measuring productivity?”
The two ministers have long disagreed about the need to return to places of work following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions. But the dispute between the two was “good natured”, one government source told the PA news agency.
Rees-Mogg used a Mail on Sunday article to warn that officials may lose the London weighting on their pay or see their jobs moved elsewhere if they were not at their desks.
“Essentially, if people are not back in their office it will be fair to assume that the job does not need to be in London,” he said.
Tories behind misogynistic claims about Angela Rayner ‘may be disciplined’
Chris Philp, the technology minister, was on interview duty for No 10 this morning. As my colleague Rachel Hall reports, Philp said that if the government whips found who was responsible for the anti-Rayner briefing to the Mail on Sunday (see 9.27am), they could be disciplined.
Johnson’s ‘line to take’ criticism of sexist smear against Angela Rayner inadequate, says Labour
Good morning. The local elections are less than a fortnight away, the war in Ukraine continues, and the Labour party is announcing a new tax policy. And yet Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, who has been touring the studios to explain the non-dom tax plan, has spent much of the morning responding to a sexist report about her colleague, Angela Rayner, that first appeared in the Mail on Sunday more than 24 hours ago.
In some respects it is surprising that a “story” that appears to be based on little more than a glib comment from a Tory MP (perhaps over a drink?) has attracted so much attention. The Mail on Sunday is one of the most pro-Tory papers around, but if anyone there was assuming that this report was going to damage Labour, they miscalculated massively. (Newspaper executives often have a poor grasp of political strategy, but ultimately they prioritise selling newspapers over helping the political parties they support.)
But, despite its apparent ridiculousness, or perhaps because of its apparent ridiculousness, the story struck a chord because it illuminated the pervasive sexism that almost all women in public life still encounter – despite the enormous progress made over recent decades. One MP has said Glen Owen, the Mail on Sunday political editor, who wrote the article, should have his parliamentary press pass removed. Only last week there were calls in parliament for another journalist, the Times sketchwriter Quentin Letts, to have his pass revoked for “disgraceful” misogyny in his reporting.
If you want, you can read the original Mail on Sunday article here. Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s overnight story about the row.
Yesterday Boris Johnson joined those attacking the Mail on Sunday report, saying he deplored the misogyny directed at Rayner. It has now been reported that he texted her saying the comments were “not in his name”. It is almost certainly true that No 10 had nothing to do with the briefing, although increasingly, as he tries to refute claims that he has made outrageous comments, Johnson is in the position of the boy who cried wolf; having published so much sexist material in his career as a journalist, it is easy to see why people might not believe him when he says that this time he’s in the clear. A similar thing happened last week when he denied smearing the Church of England as pro-Putin.
This morning, in an interview with Sky News, Reeves asked asked about the official Tory response to the Mail on Sunday article, and about the fact that Johnson and Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, criticised it with identical tweets.
As much as I disagree with @AngelaRayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 24, 2022
As much as I disagree with @AngelaRayner on almost every political issue I respect her as a parliamentarian and deplore the misogyny directed at her anonymously today.
— Nadine Dorries (@NadineDorries) April 24, 2022
Reeves replied:
This shouldn’t just be a line to take. This should be actually what you feel and what you believe, and also you need some action, not just warm words.
Reeves said that the Conservatives needed to make it clear to the MPs who were briefing this story that this was “totally unacceptable”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer appears on ITV’s This Morning.
10am: Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister for Brexit opportunities, speaks at a a Centre for Policy Studies event on UK competitiveness.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30am: Priti Patel, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
2.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, speaks at the Scottish TUC conference.
After 3.30pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill.
4pm: Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.
4pm: Matthew Rycroft, permanent secretary at the Home Office, gives evidence to the public accounts committee on police recruitment.
Also, Johnson and Starmer are due to take part in local election campaign events today.
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