Former Tory minister accused of misogyny over tweet mocking woman’s skin

Brendan Clarke-Smith accused of tweet that was not ‘appropriate for a sitting MP’

A former Tory minister has been accused of misogyny after he mocked a woman’s skin colour on Twitter.

Brendan Clarke-Smith accused her of being “orange with rage” over a tweet she posted joking about a Christmas card sent by a politician.

Ms Howells, an activist with the Labour party, tweeted a photograph of herself and the card, from Jill Mortimer MP.

She added: “Just found this on the shelf in boyfriend’s family home. Christmas ruined.”

Mr Clarke-Smith, the MP for Bassetlaw since 2019, reposted her original tweet, and in an apparent comment on her make-up, added: “Orange with rage.”

In response Ms Howells accused him of sexism.

She told him: “It’s clearly a joke mate, misogyny isn’t,” adding that she was “not sure this is appropriate for a sitting MP.”

She also pointed out that he had got the colour of her make-up wrong.

“It (is) Hollywood glow,” she tweeted.

Mr Clarke-Smith later tweeted a story in which Donald Trump’s skin was described as orange.

The MP was briefly a minister in the cabinet office earlier this year under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

In the run up to his election he faced criticism after saying that food banks were a “political weapon” and that it was not true that “people can’t afford to buy food on a regular basis”.

In September he came under fire after he defended the government’s position on fracking on the BBC’s Question Time programme, but added he would not support the controversial process in his own constituency.

His fellow panel member, Labour’s Wes Streeting, accused him of having a policy of “not in your backyard, just in everyone else’s”.