As Theresa May scoffed down Byron burgers, it was a wonder that a piece of prime British meat didn’t get stuck at the back of her throat. For Labour leadership challenger Owen Smith really was awfully mean when he used an inopportune phrase to criticise the new Conservative Prime Minister.
Commenting on a recent parliamentary session, Smith took the sort of opportunity politicians in the Labour Party never pass up to bemoan Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed lack of leadership. Smith said:
‘Theresa May even had the temerity to lecture Labour on social injustice, on insecurity at work. I’ll be honest with you – it pained me that we didn’t have the strength and the power and the vitality to smash her back on her heels and argue that these are our values, these are our people, this is our language that they are seeking to steal.’
Thereby accusing May of both temerity and theft, it was the suggestion that he would ‘smash her back on her heels’ which found Smith in hot water. Men, after all, evolved long ago not to have heels, and scurry about on the balls of their feet with heels these days the sole preserve of women.
So add rampant misogyny to the misdeeds perpetrated by Owen Smith, the scurrilous Welshman, who might have suggested earlier this week that Britain needs greater curbs on immigration, but spoiled some of the patriotic fervour when he added a heap of guff about raising taxes for the wealthy.
Still, one senior Labour Party figure appreciated the rugged virility of Smith’s remarks, in stark contrast to the damp flaccidity usually shown by Jeremy Corbyn. Clutching a grey paperback as they lamented that even when you call him by name, Corbyn rarely stands to attention, they cooed at the mere mention of Smith and coyly protruded their bottom over the edge of a nearby table.
But a Conservative spokesperson condemned what they described as Smith’s wish to ‘do May most roughly’, adding that instead of smashing her back on her heels he ought to get down on one knee while she feeds him the tip of a blood-red stiletto.
