Leave jailed MP Fiona Onasanya alone – she’s served her time and there are far worthier targets for your smug jeering

Lying to the police is serious, and deserves punishment – but does it really merit life-long disgrace? After all, we need MPs from all walks of life with a range of experiences.

Given that we are potentially seven days away from voluntary medicine shortages and an economic crash as a result of Brexit, it is of course normal and proper that Brexiters are directing their fury at an ex-Labour MP who voted to prevent it.

When it emerged that Fiona Onasanya, the MP for Peterborough, had endorsed the controversial Cooper-Letwin Bill – which squeaked through the Commons by a single vote – the outrage was bilious and relentless. She began trending on Twitter immediately. The executive editor of Conservative Home branded her a "disgraced criminal". A front-page headline in this morning’s Telegraph wails that a "jailbird manages to pervert the course of British history". No loss of control, here, you’ll agree. Everything is perfectly normal.

Onasanya was imprisoned in January for perverting the course of justice. Having received a speeding ticket, she was convicted of naming someone else as the driver. She was released after serving one month. Legally, she remains an MP and is perfectly entitled to vote. Labour, which withdrew the whip in December, has called for her to resign, but she is under no obligation to comply. A recall petition against her is the only way to force a by-election if enough of her constituents sign it, and that petition is currently ongoing. In other words, the law has taken its course exactly as it was intended to.

Why shouldn’t Onasanya vote in the Commons? While she has a job, she should do it. The Brexiters are fuming that she happened to vote on a piece of legislation they hated. But they remain mysteriously silent over the presence in the voting lobbies of Chris Davies, the Tory MP who recently pled guilty to claiming false expenses. He voted against the bill.

But of course this was only the beginning of the hypocrisy. It is hard to imagine the same degree of opprobrium if Onasanya was not a black woman. Women and minority MPs already receive a vastly greater level of abuse on social media, and are held to an incomparably higher standard than their white or male counterparts.

Then there is the offence itself. Yes, lying to the police is serious, and deserves punishment – but does it really merit life-long disgrace and the permanent expulsion from public life? Are we really so incapable of compassion or moral nuance that we must launch Biblical-level condemnation on a woman who entered false details on a speeding ticket? People commit this offence every day and get away with it. That makes them neither perfectly good people before nor irredeemably bad people after. And it doesn’t make the offence right. But it might encourage us to exhibit more complexity of human judgement.

And what about the social dimension? Why shouldn’t a convict serve in the Commons? We need MPs from all walks of life with a range of experiences. There are currently 90,000 people incarcerated in the UK. Are we suggesting they should automatically be forbidden to serve their country after their release? And if so, what does that say about our capacity for rehabilitation, or indeed our values?

Onasanya will have a prison record for life. She will never be re-elected as an MP. She will lose her right to practise as a solicitor. She was convicted of a crime and has been duly punished. Politics is delirious right now, but we must attempt some proportion. Brexit threatens much greater harm than anything Onasanya might have done, and Parliament has many worthier targets for our moral indignation.

Human beings are complex and flawed. They deserve both punishment and second chances. This explosion of sanctimonious moralising is in fact bullying. It is time for a little less self-righteousness and a little more perspective. We should let Onasanya get on with her job for as long as her constituents allow.