My fellow Eurosceptics are used to the rough and tumble, but MPs should never malign the public

This is extending the whole context into the arena of the electorate as a whole. No MP needs reminding that attacking the voters for casting their votes or expressing their opinions is a monumental mistake. She did however also suggest in a debate in February last year in the House of Commons that Tory MPs who support a hard Brexit (whatever that means) are “like jihadis”.

Tory Eurosceptics are a pretty resilient lot and I don’t remember anyone getting too excited about this in the House of Commons at the time. Back in the 1990s, at the time of the Maastricht rebellion, we were described as “bastards” and as “men in flapping white coats”.

More recently, Eurosceptics have been called “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. Politics is a rough old business and as MPs we get pretty used to it all. In parliament, there are rules about unparliamentary expressions and referring to colleagues as “like jihadis” is sailing pretty close to the wind. I’m sure that my constituents, particularly those who voted to leave the European Union, really would not welcome being described as “swivel-eyed” nor would any other voter, whether they voted to leave or remain.

The way it came out could have been interpreted as applying to the men amongst the 17.4 million who voted to leave. This is where it gets more difficult and why I am so glad Claire has tweeted her retraction.

Indeed, the expression “swivel-eyed”, according to the dictionary definition, means “having or displaying extreme or fanatical views” so I think it is a thoroughly good idea to make sure that this never happens again.

David Lidington of course is right in saying that our debates should be conducted on the basis of listening to one another and mutual respect.  But it is also true to say that this is easier said than done.

Let’s face it, this whole Brexit question is the biggest democratic question of all – who governs and how? The issues transcend generations and crops up in many very different contexts such as the civil war in the 1640s with Charles I versus Parliament, over the Corn Laws in the 1840s and in the campaign for men’s suffrage in the 1860s. Then, of course, there was the suffragette movement for the vote for women in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century during which there was a vast amount of personal abuse thrown around and directed particularly at the women themselves.

It also cropped up in the 1930s over the issue of appeasement and even during the debates in the House of Commons in the Second World War.

In the superb book by Nicholas Shakespeare “Six minutes in May”, he tells us what happened in 1940 with the toppling of Chamberlain and of course many of us have now seen the film the “Darkest Hour”. The language and behaviour of MPs attending the Norway debate was as bad as it gets. The word “traitor” was commonly used and members were even spat at in the lobby. There was also some pretty rough behaviour during the Maastricht debate in the 1990s.​

So, when the blood is up and passion rage, let us not get too surprised at indiscretions and exaggerated language but let us make especially sure that remarks are never applied to the voters themselves, either in the Chamber or on social media. This becomes a clear and present danger. So, thank you Claire, for your recent twitterings, which put the record straight and let us all calm down and remember what Margaret Thatcher said:

“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”

And on a personal note, on the Third Reading of the Withdrawal Bill in the House of Commons I said: “it has been my privilege to try to fight for this proposal and I am deeply grateful to all the people in the House who have agreed to it and to those who have exercised their democratic right to oppose those views”.