Was 'Sexy MP' website hacked to demote female Conservatives?

A website that allows users to rate politicians for their sexual attractiveness has been accused of being rigged against female Tory MPs.

SexyMP.co.uk - which is blocked by parliamentary servers - ranks elected members in order of perceived sex appeal, but a Reddit thread has raised suspicions that Conservative women's ratings have been manipulated downwards by hackers.

The theorists claim that the plummeting position of Tory females in the website's voting charts is a new phenomenon, and that just a few months ago there was no obvious bias towards one party in the results. They also say the attack appears not to have affected male Conservatives MPs' popularity in the Westminster 'beauty contest'.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Currently, the site - created by Made in Chelsea star Francis Boulle - is showing the Scottish National Party's Eilidh Whiteford, a 47-year-old who represents Banff and Buchan, as topping the charts in both the mixed and female categories. Yorkshire's highest-rated representative is Bradford's Naseem Shah.

The format presents users with two pictures of MPs, and in a direct comparison asks them to select which they find the most attractive. Scoreboards keep tabs on the members of the Commons who collect the most votes.

On Reddit, one user wrote:

"Someone has manipulated the rankings so that Conservative female MPs are all at the bottom of the rankings. You will note that all the Conservative MPs have been buried near the bottom of the page. This is not normal. The site wasn't in this state a few months ago. Historical rankings shows no significant favouritism for one party over any other.

"This effect is also not seen among male MPs. My best guess is that someone wrote a script to play SexyMP and have it automatically select the non-Conservative option when a Conservative came up.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The commentator estimated that around 200,000 votes could have been rigged by the rogue script.

Eilidh Whiteford's office refused to comment on the saga.

Parliament's web filters currently ban access to the site among those using the Westminster networks.

Related topics: