When the ‘Growlergate’ story first broke I gave the Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner the benefit of the doubt. After all it was quite possible that Ms Rayner had dressed for herself to make herself feel good or had made a genuine wardrobe choice that eventually turned out to be a mistake.

Any man or woman can make a wardrobe mistake after all we are all (too) human and dress in a way that turns out to be wrong for the environment or event that we are dressing for. However there is an increasing amount of both claims and evidence that Ms Rayner DID know what she was doing when she wore a revealing outfit for the Commons.

Following the Daily Mail’s story on Ms Rayner’s outfit and claims that the furore was down to ‘sexism’ other witnesses to a conversation on the House of Commons terrace where Ms Rayner referred to her genitals as her ‘Ginger Growler’ and how it could distract Boris Johnson at PMQ’s, have come forward. They have corroborated each other to the extent that it not only is it entirely reasonable to assume that Ms Rayner knew what she was doing when she wore a revealing outfit but it has also emerged that Ms Rayner, far from being a poor downtrodden victim of sexism, laughed about it.

The Sun said:

The deputy Labour leader complained that the claims, published by the Mail on Sunday last week, were concocted by sexist, male Tories.

But last night the newspaper alleged that Ms Rayner told a group of MPs: “I like to do my Sharon Stone trick.

” I cross and uncross my legs and give him a flash of my ginger g*****r.”

She is said to have made the remark on the Commons terrace several months ago.

When this story first broke Ms Rayner should have publicly laughed it off and treated it as a joke. Unfortunately she and by extension the Labour Party, tried to play the victim and accuse people of sexism when in fact it appears that Ms Rayner really did know what she was doing when she chose her outfit and laughed about it afterwards. Labour cynically exploited the manufactured outrage of the Left and of some feminists to claim that the comments about Ms Rayner and her mode of dress were misogynistic. I would be more willing to entertain such claims were it not for the fact that there have been enough people coming forward to say they heard Ms Rayner laughing and joking about her dress, how she used it and the potential effect of her dress and action choices.

I made an error. I gave Angela Rayner the benefit of the doubt as a reasonable person should do. After reading about the developments in this story I don’t think I’ll be giving her the benefit of the doubt on anything else connected to Ms Rayner.