Speaker goes for the Mail over Rayner

Westminster has been ablaze with indignation. What’s the cause this time – another Downing Street lockdown party? No, on this occasion it’s an article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about Angela Rayner. The Deputy Labour leader was accused by an anonymous Tory MP of ‘flashing’ the Prime Minister at PMQs, in the manner of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. The article’s publication prompted a storm of online criticism, with even the Prime Minister feeling it necessary to weigh in and offer Rayner his support.

Conservative backbencher Caroline Nokes – the chair of the women and equalities select committee – meanwhile wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons to ask whether the paper’s political editor Glen Owen should retain his parliamentary lobby pass. And it seems that Lindsay Hoyle has indeed read Nokes’ letter, for the Speaker has this afternoon given an icy statement in parliament. He announced that he will be hauling the Mail on Sunday editor David Dillon into parliament for a meeting with the chair of the press gallery.