IT is hard to get inside the mindset of the unnamed Tory MP who breathlessly informed a Mail on Sunday hack that Angela Rayner didn't have the debating skills of old Etonian and Oxbridge graduate, Boris Johnson, what with her being a working-class oik and all that.
But she did have a secret weapon - she had legs. Which she crossed and uncrossed to make Boris lose his thread when he was lying... sorry, speaking at the despatch box. Cunning lefty tactics.
Who knew it was so easy to put Johnson off his stride? Wouldn't you think the father of six or seven to three different women, would be well acquainted with such feminine wiles?
The Mail and its sister Sunday paper are horrible rags, and you've only got to glance at it online to notice its sexist, pervy rantings over photographs of actresses "flaunting" their cleavages/legs/arses – delete as appropriate – are a staple part of its content.
They got Michael Gove's wife, Sarah Vine, to pen the notorious 'Legs-It' nonsense, comparing the pins of then PM Theresa May and Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. And they were also once so distracted by the then Labour Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith's cleavage, they didn't notice she was talking about a terrorist attack on Glasgow airport.
It's unfortunately par for the course for women politicians. Even la Thatcher got it when French President, Francois Mitterrand drooled that she had the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe.
You may be wondering when the Mail might start comparing Sir Keir's well-turned ankle with the blond bombshell's pouting lips.
But Angela Rayner's talk of her hurt and upset at the "smear" is somewhat undermined by footage of her laughing and joking about the comparison with Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct in a podcast a few months ago.
The story has embarrassed the Tories ahead of the local elections in May, so of course the Labour Party is going to milk it. Why wouldn't they?
But maybe we should be more concerned that as many as 56 MPs have reportedly been accused of sexual misconduct. And a Tory MP has been caught watching porn on his phone in the Commons, shopped by a female minister, sitting alongside him.
So the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, should have more to do than attempt to call in the Mail on Sunday's editor for a knuckle rapping. Nor should the journalist in question, Glen Owen, have his parliamentary pass withdrawn.
A free press still needs to be allowed to operate without political interference, even when it's the Mail.
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SIR Jeffrey will have to do more than cross and uncross his legs if he's to distract the electorate from the mistakes his party has made lately.
In a corn flake choking moment earlier this week, I heard his party colleague, Paul Givan on Good Morning Ulster, say the DUP had a "progressive agenda" to present to voters.
Really? When did that start? Was it before or after their opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion rights, blood donations and adoptions being open for gay men and creationist theories being added to the Giant's Causeway visitor centre?
Who knows whether the party will be punished for the Brexit fiasco it helped create, which led inevitably to the hated NI Protocol. Will it pay at the ballot box for the internal feuding which has led to toppled leaders and dumped candidates and in the case of South Down, the defection of the entire constituency team, who are now backing the TUV candidate?
Meanwhile there are further problems in North Down, where ex-DUP man Alex Easton, now running as an independent, is being backed by former DUP people.
What larks, eh?
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THE writer Nick Cohn once observed of the Rolling Stones: "If they have any sense of neatness, they'll get themselves killed in an air crash, three days before their 30th birthday."
It was a tad harsh, but he was 22 when he wrote it and the ageing Stones, still gyrating towards their eighties, clearly didn't take any notice.
Mick Jagger should have a word with Liam Gallagher. The Mancunian rocker has decided to ignore the doctor who told him he needs a double hip replacement for his crippling arthritis.
At a mere 49, he said he'd prefer to suffer the agony of constant pain because he doesn't want the "stigma" of having such surgery.
It might not be rock and roll Liam, but at least you won't have to languish on a waiting list like ordinary folk as you've the dosh to go private when you change your mind.
