You have to hand it to Justine Thornton. After her interview, where she alerted the world to Red Ed’s status as a bit of a boulevardier having secretly dated the host of a dinner party she attended, the Daily Mail warmed to the theme. It ran a front cover picturing his conquests: Alice Miles, Stephanie Flanders, and more. And an inside spread (below).
But as Isabel Hardman noted at the time, it was hardly a slur.
“Multiple women have found man attractive” is, on balance, not the worst headline.
— Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) April 9, 2015
And the relevance to the campaign? Let’s consult the guru of gender politics, Boris Johnson. A few years back, his sister revealed one of his sayings in a Spectator diary:
‘Women cannot resist men who obviously like women’
In other words, women tend not to think: oh, the dirty dog. Boris’s theory is that if you’re known to be a player, active or retired, this arouses a certain intrigue.
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