Esther McVey fumes ‘I won’t be bullied’ as she defends controversial smoking ban tweet

Accompanying the poem, McVey said the words were “pertinent” in relation to Starmer’s smoking ban.

Speaking on GB News, she hit back at claims she is drawing on the Holocaust to make a political point and said her post was simply about civil liberties.

“It’s a powerful parable about the importance of standing up for other people’s freedoms”, she said.

“Nobody spoke out. It’s in no way drawing a comparison about the banning of smoking to what happened to the Jews by the Nazis, it’s an analogy.

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“I was saying, ‘look at what this socialist government is doing’, whether that is stopping freedom of speech or stopping people from smoking outside.

“They are coming after your money and we are seeing draconian laws about people’s land, because they want to build on it.

“It is about standing up for people’s freedoms. I won’t be bullied by the leftist Twitterati and the establishment media.”

The poem includes the lines: “Then they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out.”

In response, the Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned the Tory MP for her choice of words, and dubbed her social media stunt as “repugnant” and “breathtakingly thoughtless”.

The Board said in a statement: “The use of Martin Niemoller’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.”

McVey returned to the social media platform to discuss her analogy.

She said: “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.

“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.”

She then stated she would “not be bullied” into removing the social media post by people “who are deliberately twisting the meaning of my words and finding offence when they know none was intended”.

According to leaked Whitehall papers, seen by The Sun newspaper, ministers could extend the indoor smoking ban to beer gardens, university and hospital campuses, sports grounds, children’s play areas and small parks.