The health secretary, Wes Streeting, responded on X: No, I do not think the postwar confessional of Martin Niemoller 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.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned McVey's tweet as repugnant, stating: 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.
Rabbi David Mason posted on X: Tasteless. Utterly tasteless. How can you not see that?
McVey defended her tweet, saying: 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.
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