Theresa’s fury at MPs who said: Bring a noose
THERESA May has hit out at Tory MPs who anonymously referred to her being knifed to death or hanged.
The Prime Minister said everyone in public life needed to set an example with the language they used, as figures from across the party called for those responsible to be expelled.
At the weekend, a former minister was quoted in The Sunday Times as saying: ‘The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She’ll be dead soon.’
Mrs May was also told to ‘bring her own noose’ if she attends a meeting of Tory backbenchers later this week.
In the Commons yesterday, Mrs May said: ‘I think it is incumbent on all of us in public life to be careful about the language we use.
‘There are passionate beliefs and passionate views that are held on this subject and other subjects but whatever the subject is we should all be careful about our language.’
Mrs May’s spokesman added: ‘The Prime Minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory. Personal vitriol has no place in our politics.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said the backbenchers behind the violent remarks should have the ‘fullest weight of the Conservative Party upon them’.
‘If somebody knows who that is and if they have said it, then the Conservative Party needs to resolve that matter because it is unacceptable in this day and age, firstly to use that language and secondly to use that language about the Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘All I can say is if it is, and was, a Conservative and people know who it was, then they should feel the strong arm of the party on them.’
Fellow Tory MP Heidi Allen told the BBC that those responsible for the remarks were ‘worthy of having the whip removed and being thrown out of the party’.
Paul Masterton, another Tory MP, tweeted: ‘If I was told to “bring my own noose” to my next surgery, that I’d be “knived”, or “assassinated”, my staff would report it to the police.
‘I don’t really see why comments made by snivelling cowards on the backbenches towards the Prime Minister should be treated differently.’
Conservative MP Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, said the comments made the party look ‘awful’ in the eyes of the public.
He said it was ‘clearly unacceptable’ and ‘a shame on them, a shame on the Conservative Party’, adding: ‘We cannot start aping the kind of extremist trolls on Twitter and if MPs want to go around doing that they shouldn’t be members of our party at all.’
Tory Andrew Bridgen said the language was ‘unhelpful’ and warned his fellow Brexiteers that it risked increasing sympathy and support for the Prime Minister.
The North West Leicestershire MP told ITV: ‘That (language) is unhelpful. It won’t persuade colleagues to back a change of leadership. It’s actually going to be counter-productive at this point.’
Labour’s Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said Tory whips should unmask the MPs using ‘vile and dehumanising language’.
Miss Cooper said they were normalising violence at a time when women MPs were facing increasing hostility and little more than two years after Jo Cox was murdered in the street.
She said: ‘This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP, towards a Prime Minister who, no matter how much you might disagree with her, is someone who is doing a job in public life.
‘Nobody should be subject to that kind of violent language, which I think is normalising violence in public debate at a time when we lost Jo Cox, we have had threats against Rosie Cooper, we have had other violent death threats against women MPs.
‘It’s about time we do know who that Conservative MP who is making these threats because maybe... they will stop doing so if they are being called out publicly for using that kind of vile and irresponsible language again.’
‘Unacceptable in this day and age’