Tory MP appears to use Dumbledore's lines on Question Time

Yer a wizard, Sam!

(BBC/Warner Bros)

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons, Probation, Rehabilitation and Sentencing (a verbose title JK Rowling herself would be literarily proud of) Sam Gyimah made an emphatic statement about Theresa May's castigation of Donald Trump's recent Islamophobic tweets on BBC Question Time last night.

"It takes great bravery to stand up to your enemies, it takes even more bravery to stand up to your friends," he said.

Wise words, but have we not heard them before, in the Great Hall no less?

Several viewers made the comparison on Twitter, Albus Dumbledore having famously said in the Harry Potter series: "It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends."

Ms May purportedly standing up to the Leader of the Free World had considerably higher stakes than Neville Longbottom's act of bravery, the young wizard having stood up to fellow Hogwarts pupils Harry, Hermione and Ron in the hope of preventing Gryffindor from being docked house points.

Mr Gyimah himself retweeted a video of his answer on the panel show - he has yet to clarify whether his co-opting of Dumbledore was intentional (The Independent has reached out for comment), but hopefully he will "solemnly swear that [he was] up to no good."