Esther McVey’s ‘repugnant’ tweets show how unmoored the Tories have become

By using a Holocaust poem about the horrors of Nazi persecution to criticise Keir Starmer’s proposals to ban smoking in pub beer gardens, the former ‘minister for common sense’ appears to have abandoned what little of it she may have had, says Sean O’Grady

Former minister Esther McVey’s analogy has been described as ‘repugnant’ by the British Board of Jewish Deputies (PA Wire)

Where does one start with Esther McVey? Well, with her recent tweets – or “posting on X” as no one says.

In response to the Starmer administration’s admittedly draconian ideas about extending the smoking ban to open spaces, McVey had the idea of quoting Martin Niemöller’s famous verse about how establishment complacency helped the Nazis come to power and strengthen their grip on power.

Naturally, given that the poem was written in 1946, it references the Holocaust. As such, “First They Came…” is a powerful warning from history, and one that has usually been treated with due reverence and respect as its own kind of memorial for unspeakable cruelty on an imaginable scale.

But our Esther – a Conservative member of parliament and, until recently, the “minister for common sense” who attended Cabinet – abandoned what little common sense, good taste and common decency she possesses by quoting it, in the context of whether we should stop people smoking in pub gardens.

She didn’t use a parody of it, which would have been problematic, but at least would have had a basis in satire (or self-satire). No, she ploughed straight on, quoted the original text, with the line “Pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban”, as if to add some bogus sense of solemnity to the great occasion of a leak of a public health policy.

“Pertinent” is a big word that McVey has probably picked up from her time in politics, one she will have observed being used by the cleverer people she mixes with, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.

As a result, she has received some attention on social media – not of the usual, crudely abusive pile-on variety, but a much more restrained, appalled, more-in-sorrow-than-anger kind.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded to her with dignity, calling her post “repugnant”, and “breathtakingly thoughtless”: “The use of Martin Niemöller’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.” Note how they cannot bear to utter her name.

It happens all too often that people misuse the Holocaust and the Nazis in relatively trivial political arguments, and when they do the best thing is to delete, apologise and crawl away in shame for a bit. Such is McVey’s total lack of, well, any kind of sense and her overweening vanity that she chose instead to double down.

If anything, her subsequent defence makes her look like an even bigger fool than the original crass tweet. She defending herself, saying that: “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.”

Well, it’s not in fact ridiculous, and she inadvertently admits as much because she pleads that “it is called an analogy – those who restrict freedoms start with easy targets then expand their reach”.

But the reason people have found her interventions so upsetting is precisely because she was making an entirely inappropriate analogy – equating a no-smoking policy with a crime against humanity. Perhaps the greatest such crime.

It is so grotesquely misjudged. Esther: Not all analogies are sensible or OK, you know? Some are highly offensive, as here.

It may well be that McVey didn’t mean any offence, but much offence was made, and she ought to have the humility to see that and think about it. She considers those who condemned her thoughtless remarks, such as the UK’s largest Jewish organisation, “politically correct bullies”. No, Esther. Just correct.

Like cover-ups in more grave political scandals, which do more harm than the original crime, on social media it’s the doubling-down that makes things worse with a stupid tweet itself.

It is hard to fathom what McVey – whose now-defunct weekend show on GB News was found to have broken broadcasting regulations – thinks she will achieve by toughing things out. But her tweet, and the total absence of any disciplinary action from her party, is (another) small but telling indicator that there are serious things wrong with today’s Conservatives.