Former Conservative Minister Esther McVey has refused to apologise for using a famous poem about the Holocaust to criticise proposed restrictions on smoking.

Speaking exclusively to the JC, she said: “Whilst the poem I quoted was indeed about the Holocaust, it also conveys a very powerful wider parable about the importance of standing up for other people’s freedoms. It was in that context I used it.

“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.

“It is called an analogy – those who restrict freedoms start with easy targets then expand their reach.”

The former “common sense minister” added: “No offence was ever intended and no equivalence was being suggested.

“This new socialist government should send shudders down everyone’s spine. Imposing laws it has no mandate for, whether removing money from pensioners, removing freedoms from individuals – presiding over a two tier system of policing and justice.”

McVey insisted that she would “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”.

She insisted: “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 and then taking people for fools.”

Yesterday, the MP for Tatton in Cheshire posted the words to First They Came, a famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller about the indifference to Nazi tyranny by ordinary Germans and said they were “Pertinent words re Starmer’s smoking ban.”

Her comments were met with widespread criticism.

A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies said, “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.”

A Jewish Leadership Council spokesperson told the JC ,"The comparison of a potential smoking ban to the Nazi treatment of Jews is crass in the extreme and minimises the horrors of the Holocaust. This falls far below the standards that we expect of MPs and must be rejected by the Conservative Party leadership."

Health Secretary Wes Streeting MP posted on X/Twitter, “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.”

The Conservative Party has been contacted for comment.