The deification of Angela Rayner these past seven days has been nothing short of sickening, says Dan Wootton

The deification of Angela Rayner these past seven days has been nothing short of sickening.

In the worst example of London liberal media group think in a long time, the potty mouthed political redhead who loves referring to all Tories as ‘scum’ miraculously transformed before our very eyes into a hapless damsel in distress, the victim of the worst type of sexism, classism and any other ism going.

The BBC, ITV News, Sky News and the rest of the usual suspects stoked faux horror that this shy and retiring political victim had been outrageously accused of using her risqué, leg-revealing Commons outfit to distract the Prime Minister by uncrossing and crossing her legs, Sharon Stone-style, during PMQs.

But over the weekend, that narrative collapsed.

Not that you’d know it if you were tuned into any of those aforementioned outlets.

The ‘desperate, perverted smears’, as Rayner later called them, were first spread by her.

Whoops!

Four MPs witnessed, on a chilly evening in January, Rayner exclaiming…

"I like to do my Sharon Stone trick. I cross and uncross my legs and give him a flash of my ginger g******”

Heaven forbid that journalists dare to report what bile Rayner actually spewed to Tory MPs during a particularly unseemly session on the Commons Terrace.

Instead, the week ended with left-wing columnists in the Mirror calling for misogyny to become a hate crime.

Because we appear to be existing in a post-truth universe where the prevailing media narrative cannot be disturbed by inconvenient facts.

Hence why Rayner can continue tweeting about Boris Johnson being a sexist this Bank Holiday Monday, knowing that she’s got away with her week-long deception and manipulation of the gormless British broadcast media, who swallow her provable lies because they fit an exhausting but transparent woke agenda.

Rayner’s hypocritical growls of indignation were not the first time that Labour’s lies have been well and truly exposed in the course of the past seven days.

It has also emerged that Rayner WAS in attendance at the infamous Beers With Keir Hartlepool party at the Durham Miners Hall last April, where Starmer downed beers and scoffed Indian takeaways with colleagues in an obvious breach of lockdown regulations at the time.

Now, in theory, I have zero issue with what Labour’s leadership team and their pals did late that night after a hard day of campaigning.

By now, any sane individual should see that the lockdown restrictions inflicted on Brits in varying degrees for two years were nonsensical, impractical, inhumane and virtually impossible to follow.

But the problem for Labour is that for the past few months they have consistently gone on the record to state that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak must both resign for even the smallest breach, given they were asking the rest of the population to follow these cruel regulations.

Of course, Labour didn’t just back the lockdown regulations, they were regularly calling for even tougher measures to be introduced.

So that puts Starmer and Rayner in a potentially career-ending position.

Why the hell should they stay in post when their breach of lockdown regulations was far more egregious than that committed by Boris or Rishi, who were presented with a birthday cake for the PM which never left its Tupperware container and consumed no alcohol at the daytime event for which they have received a fixed penalty notice?

In fact, Starmer actually wants us to believe that he briefly broke for beers and takeaways at 10pm on a Friday night and then returned to work afterwards.

Let’s not forget the vile rules at the time stated: ‘You must not socialise indoors except with your household or support bubble.’

What’s more, the Labour party lied about Rayner’s attendance at the event in question and have spent the past year trying to cover up the circumstances of the gathering – the exact ‘crime’ they believe should see Boris deposed as Prime Minister, plunging the country into chaos in the midst of a European war and a once-in-a-generation cost of living crisis.

And the moment Partygate began crashing down around a beer swigging Starmer and Randy Rayner’s Basic Instinct story collapsed, guess what happened? This-

Labour’s leadership pretended they hadn’t just spent the past five months banging on about Partygate ad nauseum and laughably claimed they want to focus on the issues that really matter.

And, by and large, the mainstream media has swallowed such an obvious mischaracterisation of what’s really been going on.

Why linger on these scandals now the original narrative has collapsed, when there’s bigger sticks with which to bash Boris Johnson and the Tory party days out from the local elections?

All I’m asking for is consistency.

If Partygate and Rayner’s Basic Instinct scandal were considered the biggest story by these news organisations when the narrative was running in favour of the Labour party, it shouldn’t be banished from the news agenda the moment the facts tip in favour of the Tories.

Rayner is a highly entertaining politician, who clearly despises the Leader of no opposition Keir Starmer and is out to replace him as soon as humanly possible.

But the truth is not her strong point.

Treating her as a celebrity, with softball interviews and unquestioning reportage, is a disservice to voters.

And it’s actually sexist in itself, suggesting a senior Labour politician with her eyes firmly fixed on becoming Prime Minister should be held to a lower standard…simply because she’s a woman.

That’s the type of misogyny I’d expect Rayner to rail against…