Quentin Letts's woman problem

When not jabbering away in language impenetrable to anyone who didn’t attend Haileybury College in the early 1970s, tiresome Daily Mail sketchwriter Quentin Letts can often be found displaying an offensive and often downright weird attitude to women.

Letts’s sketches often focus on female politicians’ looks, hair and tone of voice – inevitably “clucking” or “shrieking”, while being compared to “schoolmistresses” and “witches”.

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In 2007, covering the election of Harriet Harman as Labour’s deputy leader, Letts wrote in the Mail how she “waddled up on stage”. She was “a hectoring, bleating, finger-wagging nanny”, he chortled, “a frightful, posh, humourless ticker-offer”, “a monumental, gold-plated, ocean-going hypocrite” who was “about as appealing as a case of raging trench foot”.

In 2017, appearing on the Today programme to debate with Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, Letts said, weirdly: “I wish I could pin her to the ground and tickle her under the armpits to make you smile, my dear.” He took to what was then Twitter afterwards to boast: “Actually got Polly to smile. She has lovely dimples.”

In 2022 Letts wrote about Labour MP Lyn Brown during a debate, describing her as “clucking”, “spat, with a tweak of head and prim patting of hairdo”, and “bouncing on her broomstick”. The column prompted Labour MP Barry Sheerman to raise a point of order in the House, calling the depiction “sexist, misogynistic, and totally unacceptable” and asking whether Letts’s parliamentary press pass should be revoked (the Speaker declined, and Letts gloated: “Great excitement: I’ve been attacked by old Barry Sheerman!”).

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He has also described Dame Judi Murray as a “great cow walrus”, Camila Batmanghelidjh as “that”, made coarse remarks about Vivienne Westwood’s anatomy, always refers to “Sir Sandi Toksvig” (she’s gay) and spells the former Scottish first minister’s name as “Nicola Sturrrgeon” (she’s Scottish).

Still, at least Letts has found one woman in politics he finds agreeable. Covering Andy Burnham’s set-piece speech on social care this week, he took to X to write “V slow delivery from Burnham. He keeps almost losing his thread. Maybe he is distracted by amazingly short skirt in front row.” To quote one of Letts’s own most overused catchphrases: pass the sick bag, Alice!