They really don’t like it up ’em, do they? The horrific mutation of Eton, ego and the European Research Group (ERG) that produces the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg must not be called nasty names. Oh, no. It has been suggested that the Labour MP David Lammy went too far on The Andrew Marr Show when he said that comparing the ERG – a group of Tory MPs that supports a hard Brexit – to Nazis was “not strong enough”. Marr challenged Lammy on his language, pointing out that the MPs he was referring to were elected representatives. Lammy responded: “I don’t care how elected they were – so was the far right in Germany.”

Lammy’s rhetoric has been criticised, but let’s join the dots. Johnson says he is pro-immigration, and says he has only met Steve Bannon twice. I haven’t got all day to rehearse the racist remarks Johnson has made over the years.

Rees-Mogg posted a video of the leader of the German political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), although he said afterwards he “was not endorsing” them. The AfD march alongside neo-Nazis, want refugee boats sunk and say Islam is worse than the plague. In 2013, Rees-Mogg went to dinner with the Traditional Britain Group, although he said he had “clearly made a mistake” by doing so, even though he admits he had been tipped off about their views. That group’s Facebook page has called for Doreen Lawrence and “millions of others” to be “requested to return to their natural homelands”.

The BBC has reported that leading Brexiters informally call themselves Grand Wizards. Whether this is a reference to the leaders of the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan is, I suppose, debatable.

Maybe Lammy should have toned it down, and referred to neo-Nazis. Maybe he should believe all these people are enthusiastic anti-racists. Maybe after his advocacy over Windrush and Grenfell, he has simply had enough.

On that same programme, Marr interviewed Gerard Batten, the Ukip leader, who claimed his new adviser Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (I refuse to use his made-up name, Tommy Robinson) “doesn’t have far-right views”. The far right always pretends it is not the far right. That is the game it excels at, and the BBC plays right into it. Lammy refused to play by their rules, and who can blame him?