LABOUR parliamentary candidate Tulip Siddiq said ‘quite clever’ when shown the new Green Party poster depicting MP Caroline Lucas and party leader Natalie Bennett above the slogan: what are you afraid of, boys? The ads, rolling around on the back of bicycle trailers, are part of the challenge to get the fast-growing Greens into TV debates ahead of May’s general election.

@WembleyMatters Quite clever!

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) January 19, 2015

But Tulip’s party colleague Sarah Hayward, Camden’s council leader, saw no cleverness in the campaign. She tweeted that as Natalie Bennett, who is standing against Labour in Holborn and St Pancras, would no doubt hate being referred to as a ‘girl’, it was a double standard to refer to David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband as ‘boys’. And ‘Arghh’.

Why does Green TV debate campaign call men ‘boys’? Bet @natalieben would combust if she were called a girl. As I would on her behalf. Arghh.

— Sarah Hayward (@Sarah_Hayward) January 19, 2015

To be honest, I saw the poster and thought that it was a simple play on the well-worn phrase, ‘boys club’, but Sarah came back and told naive ol’ me that some people were instead seeing a riff on the ancient but famous Wonderbra billboard. Not a good look, she tweeted, and I’ve found at least one local Green member today who agrees with her about the choice of layout.

@RichardOsley You’ll have to ask @natalieben that. Others have taken it to be an oblique reference to the wonderbra ad. It’s not a good look

— Sarah Hayward (@Sarah_Hayward) January 19, 2015

Exhibit A and B are at the top of bottom of this page for you to judge for yourselves what the marketing men and women were thinking. More than 20 years old, the original underwear ad, below, is probably older than some of the new members apparently rushing to the Green cause this week.