“I have let you down” – and in more ways than one

On a day when the BBC showed Into the Storm, and the Economist came through the letter box – and I got to read the obituary of Richard Sonnenfeldt, the chief interpreter at Nuremberg – the report in the Daily Telegraph of David Wilshire’s email reply to one of his constituents beggars belief. It included the following,

“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers,”

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the MPs’ expenses story, comparing the treatment of MPs to that of Jews in Nazi Germany is a quite astonishing thing to say.  One of  Mr Wilshire’s constituents has suggested that he should go now, rather than stay on until the election. He cannot be the only one.