‘This is grossly offensive from someone who sat at the Tory cabinet table just months ago.’
Former Tory minister Esther McVey has been condemned for comparing the government’s plans to extend the smoking ban with Nazi Germany.
McVey posted a famous poem about the Holocaust on X, the MP for Tatton shared a section of Martin Niemoller’s 1946 poem: “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.
“Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
Below it, the MP for Tatton wrote: “Pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban.”
McVey was widely condemned for her “repugnant” post, with The Board of Deputies of British Jews calling on the former cabinet minister to apologise for the “breathtakingly thoughtless comparison”.
The Board of Deputies said: “The use of Martin Neimoller’s poem about the horrors of the Nazis to describe a potential smoking ban is an ill-considered and repugnant action.
“We would strongly encourage the MP for Tatton to delete her tweet and apologise for this breathtakingly thoughtless comparison.”
Labour’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting was also among those who condemned McVey’s post, replying to McVey, he wrote on X: “No, I do not think the post-war confessional of Martin Niemöller about the silent complicity of the German intelligentsia and clergy in the Nazi rise to power is pertinent to a Smoking Bill that was in your manifesto and ours to tackle one of the biggest killers.
“Get a grip.”
Labour Party Chair Ellie Reeves posted on X: “This is grossly offensive from someone who sat at the Tory cabinet table just months ago. These comments should be condemned by the Leader of the Opposition and those competing to be the next Tory leader.”
McVey refused to delete her post and insisted she “would not be bullied” into taking it down.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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