Ukip has suspended one of its General Election candidates over a set of social media posts which prompted allegations of racism.
Paddy Singh will continue to be listed as Ukip candidate on the ballot paper for North Wiltshire in the June 8 election, but the party is withdrawing its endorsement of him.
Anti-racism campaigners highlighted tweets by former cavalry officer Captain Singh dating back to 2014, in which he described Israelis as “basically Nazis in mentality” and said there was no hope of a ceasefire in the Middle East “with the Nazi Jews like wild dogs on the rampage”.
Singh also posted a message saying that “it won’t be long before the Chinese start eating human meat. It may be a super power, but they are like animals”.
And in 2016 he tweeted a link to an article about the murder of a Pakistani politician with the comment: “Is Pakistan a country inhabited by humans or animals?”
A Ukip spokesman said: “As soon as these social media comments came to our attention, we suspended him from his membership of the party and we have removed our endorsement of him as candidate.”
The Press Association was unable immediately to contact Singh, but speaking to the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald before his suspension, he said: “My tweets were reactions to news items. Maybe I should not have made those comments and maybe I should have gone away to digest those articles before commenting on them.
“There is no question of being racist but I would like to apologise to anyone I may have offended.”
As the deadline for nominations has passed, Ukip is unable to remove Singh’s party designation from the ballot paper or nominate an alternative candidate for the constituency.