A Tory MEP has said Britons who display “extreme EU loyalty” should be tried for treason.
David Campbell Bannerman said on Wednesday morning that the Treason Act should be brought “up to date”.
The pro-Brexit MEP for the East of England tweeted his comment along with a picture of the front page of the The Daily Telegraph.
The newspaper this morning reported calls for treason laws to be changed to allow enemies of the state to be jailed for life.
A report by the Policy Exchange think-tank said the laws, which date back to 1351, are now unworkable.
The study has been backed by Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and Amber Rudd, the former home secretary.
The last person to be convicted under the Act was William Joyce, more commonly known as Lord Haw-Haw, who was hanged in 1946 for assisting Nazi Germany.
In a foreword to the report, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord Judge wrote: “If a citizen of this country chooses to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan against British forces, his crime is more than terrorism. It is treason, and should be prosecuted accordingly.”
It comes amid the furore over the government’s decision to drop death penalty objections in the case of two men accused of being members of an Islamic State cell who face being sent to the US for trial.
Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who are understood to have been stripped of their British citizenship, are said to have been members of the brutal four-man Beatles group of IS executioners in Syria and Iraq.