Bring your own noose to your show trial : can political abuse sink any lower?

TODAY’s warning that Theresa May should ‘bring her own noose’ to her ‘show trial’ before the 1922 Committee highlights the level of visceral aggression which Brexit has brought to political discourse.

The 2016 EU referendum split the Tory tribe in two, and led to exile for David Cameron and George Osborne as Mrs May moved into Downing Street. Osborne’s bitterness came out in his vengeful line about not resting until Mrs May was ‘chopped up in bags in my freezer’.

Mrs May’s catastrophic General Election campaign heightened the frustration of the Brexiteer wing, as No 10 was forced to negotiate with Brussels without a Commons majority. It might explain Boris Johnson’s angry complaint in The Mail on Sunday that Mrs May had ‘wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to [EU negotiator] Michel Barnier’.

Its not just the Tories of course: Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell spoke about ‘lynching’ Cabinet Minister Esther McVey, while his colleague Clive Lewis told an audience member at a party event to ‘get on your knees, bitch’.

Here are some of the most vicious comments to come from MPs in recent times...

‘You realise it’s a s***show’ Johnny Mercer on the current Government

‘They were arguing “Why are we sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?”’ John McDonnell recalling a public meeting demonstrating against Esther McVey

‘[I won’t rest until she] is chopped up in bags in my freezer’ George Osborne on Theresa May

‘We have wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier’ Boris Johnson on Theresa May’s Brexit plan

‘I always think he looks like somebody has put their finger up his bottom and he rather likes it’ Anna Soubry on Nigel Farage

‘A stupid, sanctimonious dwarf’ Simon Burns to Commons Speaker John Bercow

‘Boris? Well, he’s the life and soul of the party but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening’ Amber Rudd on the former Foreign Secretary during a heated TV debate

‘I am not blind’ David Davis, asked if he had tried to embrace Diane Abbott

‘Get on your knees, bitch’ Clive Lewis to an audience member at a Momentum event

‘[Prince] Harry can’t actually fly a helicopter... He just sits there going “vroom vroom”’ Slur from Kensington Labour MP Emma Dent Coad

‘Calm down, dear’ David Cameron to Angela Eagle in the Commons chamber