Janet Street-Porter: Dim Dom’s cheeky wink made my blood boil: Why should women have to put up with creepy gestures that belong in a different age?
A rowdy night in my local pub seems preferable to an afternoon in the House of Commons. Judging by the performance of the Deputy Prime Minister at the Despatch Box this week, there would be less chance of encountering dodgy jokes and creepy body language.
In 2022, post #MeToo, is it really OK to be seen on National television proudly smirking as you offer a saucy WINK to Angela Rayner, a working class woman who has fought long and hard to claw her way to the top in the horrible bear pit that is British politics?
We’re not talking about a random bloke on a building site here. Some neanderthal who just arrived from Mars, or an ill-educated oaf who has spent his life in seclusion reading out of date copies of Penthouse, possibly hoping to meet a Pet before he dies.
No, the winker in this case attended both of Britain’s most prestigious universities- gaining degrees at both Oxford and Cambridge. A man who claims to have ‘women’ as his friends.
Sadly, Dominic Raab doesn’t understand that modern females have different expectations to his granny’s generation. We’re not grateful to be acknowledge with a wink- the exception being Amanda Holden, who seems to be living in her own time warp, telling reporters she’s thrilled to be whistled at by builders at the ripe old age of 51.
Dominic Raab’s scummy gesture to the Deputy Labour leader during Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday marks a new low for the boors running Britain, but- after Partygate- is anyone surprised?
Pictured: Interchange in the commons today between deputies Dominic Raab and Angela Rayner. Raab winked at Rayner and calls her a champagne socialist because she enjoys opera
One Labour MP tweeted ‘I will never unsee Raab’s wink from the Despatch box. I feel soiled.’
To which Rayner tweeted ‘Imagine how I feel’.
Why should women have to grow skins that are twice as thick as mens’? Pretend they can take a joke and a spot of low level banter in order to fit in?
Exchanges between our two main parties have degenerated into cat calling and class war of the most infantile kind. Politics is now about posturing and posing- with the real policies which might affect our lives left by the wayside.
It’s so much easier for Ministers to wink, make funny faces and turn the whole show into a circus act in the vain hope that voters will be satisfied with the shlocky cabaret and temporarily forget that they won’t be able to afford to fill their cars, heat their homes and do the weekly shop without maxxing out their credit cards.
With the Bank of England threatening another rise in interest rates, personal debt at a record high and food prices soaring- what does it matter if Angela Rayner managed to cross the chasm that still divides the posh people from the workers, attending an opera in the Sussex Countryside?
Anyone would think she’d broken into Windsor and nicked the Queen’s Corgi basket.
According to Raab, she was guilty of sipping bubbly at Glynebourne while fellow lefties were on the picket lines supporting striking rail workers. Cue (extremely flat) joke about ‘champagne socialists’ back in the Labour party.
Labour Party Deputy Leader Angela Rayner speaks during Prime Minister’s Questions
To which Rayner retorted that during the crisis in Afghanistan, Raab was ‘on a sun lounger’. True enough.
On twitter, Rayner pointed out that Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is ‘the story of a working class woman who gets the better of a privileged but dim-witted villain’.
Composer Howard Goodall commented that Figaro was written as a satire on an out of touch ruling class, the bullies and sexual predators who exploited the people who worked for them. In Mozart’s time (unlike today) opera was popular entertainment enjoyed by rich and poor.
Let’s not bother to explain this to Dom- the Karate black belt and former corporate lawyer has never been known for his subtelty or empathy.
In 2018, when he was appointed Brexit Secretary, replacing his former boss David Davis, his diary secretary told the Daily Mirror ‘I’m not a fan.’ She revealed he ate exactly the same Pret sandwich every day (since denied) and commented ‘he’s difficult to work with and has tunnel vision. He finds it difficult dealing with women and is very dismissive.
Talking of tunnels, Raab hadn’t been long in his new job when he blabbed he hadn’t quite understood the importance of the Dover-Calais route for British Trade.
Pictured: Janet Street-Porter
He was steadily accumulating quite a back catalogue of unfortunate comments. In 2017, he questioned whether people using food banks were really poor, or ‘just had a cash flow problem’.
In 2011, he’d written that ‘men suffer more discrimination than women’ for a political website, proposing that they should copy feminists and ‘burn their briefs’. Another ham fisted attempt at satire.
The following year, he co-authored a book which claimed that once they enter the workplace, ‘the British are amongst the worst idlers in the world’.
That doesn’t apply to Dom, because he has been working flat out ever since to try and become leader of the Tory party. But his all-too-regular gaffes make that a receding possibility.
In 2020, when asked to comment on the Black Lives Matter movement, he said that the gesture of Taking the Knee as a sign of respect originated from Game of Thrones.
But his most provocative put down occurred in 2011, when he told the world ‘feminists are now amongst the most obnoxious bigots’.
Last December Raab commented on the photo showing Downing Street staff drinking in the gardens of Number 10 during a time when social gatherings were banned and the numbers attending funerals restricted. He said ‘it is palpably not a social gathering because you had people in work suits’ adding ‘those staff would have been working under gruelling conditions’.
No wonder Boris appointed Dim Dom his deputy because the chance of this charisma-free chap ever becoming party leader are less than zero.
Men like Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson have the emotional intelligence of randy teenage students and have barely grown up since they enjoyed partying during freshers weeks many decades ago.
As for respecting the rights of working women, a committee of MPs has voted to ban babies from the Commons, claiming tiny tots would be a ‘distraction’ and parliamentary business would be impeded.
This follows an incident last year when MP Stella Creasy brought her three month son Pip to work, to protest at the lack of child care and maternity cover for female MPs.
Although young Pip slumbered throughout the proceedings, other MPs were outraged and it was decided that a committee should investigate whether babies are acceptable in their workplace.
It seems not. The decision stinks, but on the other hand, perhaps it’s better that little Pip and his pals are not exposed to the ribald remarks, nudges and winks of the debating Chamber. It might have an appalling impact on their future development.
For a glimpse of life in the past- forget Only Fools and Horses, just tune into PMQ’s.
Source: Read Full Article