A minister has suggested there could be an internal party investigation into which Conservative MP briefed yesterday’s Mail on Sunday front page story.

The story, which focused on deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner, said: “Tory MPs have mischievously suggested that Ms Rayner likes to distract the PM when he is in the dispatch box by deploying a fully-clothed Parliamentary equivalent of Sharon Stone’s infamous scene in the 1992 film Basic Instinct.”

It went on: “It is also suggested she employs the tactic when sitting next to Sir Keir when he faces Mr Johnson at PMQs”.

The article then quotes an unnamed MP as stating: “She [Rayner] knows she can’t compete with Boris’s Oxford Union debating training, but she has other skills which he lacks.

“She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us on the [House of Commons] terrace.”

The piece also described Rayner as: “a grandmother who left school at 16 while pregnant and with no qualifications before becoming a care worker”.

Philp told Sky News that he was “… appalled that that sentiment was being expressed. It is offensive. It is misogynistic.

“The prime minister and Cabinet ministers have been absolutely right to roundly condemn that sentiment and to offer support to Angela Rayner on this issue.

Quizzed by the broadcaster over whether government whips would be examining the issue and disciplining whoever briefed the paper, Philp said: “I think if it ever comes out who said that then I imagine they would be subject to discipline, yes.”

When asked how it was possible that the prime minister and culture secretary Nadine Dorries posted the same tweet addressing the matter, Philp said: “They share the same view. They are colleagues in government.”

“I have got no idea who said it. No one has ever said anything like that to me or even hinted at it and I think everybody is appalled by the misogynistic sentiment,” he stressed.

Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BBC this morning: “I just think this is a wider issue about what Parliament is like today and I think that all parties need to ensure that their MPs behave with dignity and respect towards other colleagues in Parliament, whether that is other MPs or staff members.

“To be honest I am sick and tired of the way that female MPs and women are treated in Parliament and if this story and this outrageous slur on Angela [Rayner] gets changed, that would be a good thing.”

“I would say to the Conservative Party ‘your MPs are briefing newspapers that Angela and perhaps other MPs are using their sex to get an advantage in politics’.
“It is absolutely outrageous,” she went on.