A Conservative MP came under fire this weekend after invoking the second world war in a statement about the way the “ungrateful” EU treats the UK on Twitter.

Daniel Kawczynski, the representative for Shrewsbury, claimed Britain received no money from the Marshall plan, an American initiative agreed in 1948 to give $12bn to help rebuild western Europe. In reality, Britain received around 20% of the money, more than any other country.

Britain helped to liberate half of Europe. She mortgaged herself up to eye balls in process. No Marshall Plan for us only for Germany. We gave up war reparations in 1990. We put £370 billion into EU since we joined. Watch the way ungrateful EU treats us now. We will remember. — Daniel Kawczynski (@DKShrewsbury) February 2, 2019

But Kawczynski, who has previously criticised Germany for unpaid war reparations despite the Foreign Office’s decision to waiver the UK’s right to compensation, isn’t the first politician to have used war analogies to describe Brexit proceedings:

Mark Francois

Last week, the leave-backing MP for Rayleigh and Wickford utilised his father’s second world war experiences to criticise the German CEO of Airbus during an impassioned live BBC interview.

Before ripping up a letter penned by Tom Enders, who warned the aerospace giant could be forced to close its factories if we leave the EU without a deal, Francois said: “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg

The high-profile chair of the Brexit-backing European Research Group and Conservative MP for North East Somerset is also disposed to referencing past British victories against EU countries.

At a fringe event in October 2017, Rees-Mogg emphasised the importance of Brexit by declaring it as the “Magna Carta”. He added: “It’s the Burgesses coming at parliament, it’s the great reform bill, it’s the bill of rights, it’s Waterloo, it’s Agincourt, it’s Crécy. We win all of these things.”

After a member of the audience yelled “Trafalgar!” Rees-Mogg replied: “And Trafalgar, absolutely.”

David Davis

Comments by then Brexit secretary that if “our civil service can cope with world war II it can easily cope with this”, prompted Garry Graham, the deputy general secretary of Prospect, a trade union which represents civil servants, to point out a flaw in his logic.

“David Davis has sought to invoke the Blitz spirit in his argument that the civil service needs no more resources to deal with the challenges of Brexit,” said Graham.

“Between 1939 and 1944 the non-industrial civil service increased numbers by 404,000 – a figure greater than the current civil service.”

Andrew Adonis

Though Remainers have deployed war rhetoric on a lesser scale, last December Adonis tweeted that Jeremy Corbyn should be “more Attlee please” in terms of having the courage to back a People’s Vote.

“When Attlee as Leader of the Opposition pulled the plug on Chamberlain & appeasement in May 1940 & installed Churchill – the situation which the crisis most resembles – he didn’t look at opinion polls but acted on the best interests of the country,” wrote Adonis.

Boris Johnson

Perhaps the most ill-considered war rhetoric was used by Johnson in May 2016, when he argued in a Telegraph interview that the EU were trying to create a superstate like Hitler had.

“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods,” said Johnson.