UK politician criticized for using anti-Nazi poem to oppose smoking ban

British parliament member Esther McVey met with immediate pushback late last week after sharing lines on social media from a poem by Martin Niemöller titled “First They Came,” including the line “then they came for the Jews,” in reaction to proposed legislation against public smoking.

She wrote that they were “pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban.”

The Board of Deputies responded that the use of a poem about Nazi horrors to describe a potential smoking ban is “an ill-considered and repugnant action.”

The group said that it strongly encouraged “the MP for Tatton to delete her tweet and apologize for this breathtakingly thoughtless comparison.”

Following up a little more than 90 minutes after the board’s statement, McVey posted on X seven paragraphs of reply.

“Nobody is suggesting that banning smoking outside pubs can be equated with what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis,” McVey wrote. “It is called an analogy—those who restrict freedoms start with easy targets then expand their reach.

She continued, saying she was “pretty sure everyone understands the point I was making and knows that no offense was ever intended and that no equivalence was being suggested.”