Tory MP Esther McVey has been criticised for using a poem about the Holocaust to denounce Keir Starmer’s plans to ban smoking in pub beer gardens.

On Thursday (29 August), the prime minister did not deny a ban on outdoor smoking is in the works, telling journalists that the Labour government must “take the action to reduce the burden on the NHS and reduce the burden on the taxpayer”, adding: “That’s why I spoke before the election about moving to a preventative model when it comes to health.”

After news of the government plans came out, McVey, who has been the MP for Tatton, in Cheshire, since 2017, posted part of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s searing poem ‘First they came…’ on X/Twitter

The 1946 poem focuses on the inaction of the German community during the Nazis’ rise to power, which enabled Adolf Hitler to persecute and murder millions of people during the Holocaust.

The former minister for common sense concluded her post by saying they were “pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban”.

Notable figures and Jewish organisations were quick to condemn McVey.

Telling her to “get a grip”, health secretary Wes Streeting said: “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.”

In a statement shared on social media, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said using the “horrors of the Nazis to describe a potential smoking ban” is an “ill-considered and repugnant action”.

They went on to say: “We would strongly encourage the MP to delete her tweet and apologise for this breathtakingly thoughtless comparison.”

Meanwhile, The Campaign Against Antisemitism asked why politicians need to “inject totally overblown Nazi comparisons into our political discourse”, adding: “Comparing the proposed smoking ban to life under the Nazi regime, which murdered six million Jewish men, women and children, and deliberately started one of the most devastating wars in history, is not only ignorant but a moral disgrace.”

Rabbi David Mason branded McVey’s post “utterly tasteless”.

And 90-year-old Holocaust survivor and author Lucy Lipiner wrote: “My cousin was only two, with his arms wrapped around his mama’s neck, when he was herded into a gas chamber to choke to death. Not being able to smoke in some places is inconvenient. To compare the two is disgusting, if that word is even enough.”

McVey responded to the criticism by sharing a statement saying she would not delete the post, and that her comments were meant as an analogy.

“Nobody is suggesting that banning smoking outside pubs can be equated with what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. It is ridiculous for anyone to even suggest that was what I was doing,” she said.

“It is called an analogy. Those who restrict freedoms start with easy targets then expand their reach. I am pretty sure everyone understands the point I was making and knows that no offence was ever intended and that no equivalence was being suggested.”

McVey went on to say Starmer’s “socialist government” should send “shudders down everyone’s spines” and accused the prime minister of overseeing what she called a two-tier system of policing and justice. She did not quote the part from the poem about socialists and trade unionists also being victims of the Nazis.

“I will not be bullied into removing a tweet by people who are deliberately twisting the meaning of my words and finding offence when they know none was intended. We already have too much of that politically correct bullying designed to silence any free speech they don’t like.

“If they think I can be bullied in that way then they have picked the wrong target. Someone has to make a stand against the metropolitan politically correct bullies. It is not my tweet people should be outraged about, but Starmer lying to get into power, then taking people for fools.”

Her latest comments resulted in another round of ridicule.

One person wrote: “Using the incineration of millions of humans as an ‘analogy’ to the introduction of new limits on having a fag in shared spaces is possibly the worst take of 2024 so far.”

Someone else pointed out: “An analogy highlights similarities between two things that are otherwise unlike. There are no similarities between the Holocaust and a smoking ban outside pubs. Get a hold of yourself.”

A third wrote: “What a truly ridiculous and offensive defence of a stupid comment.”

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