A Ukip local election candidate featured in the party’s latest election broadcast has been suspended after “repellent” racist and anti-Islamic views appeared on his Twitter feed.
Andre Lampitt, a Zimbabwean decorator and kitchen fitter, appeared in the Ukip film complaining about being undercut by “lads from Eastern Europe”.
Ukip said they had suspended his membership after seeing Twitter posts that described Islam as evil and made derogatory remarks about slavery and Africans.
A party spokesman said: “We are deeply shocked that Mr Lampitt has expressed such repellent views.
“His membership of the party has been suspended immediately pending a full disciplinary process.”
The spokesman said Ukip was aware of at least six posts expressing “various extreme racist views” including anti-Islamic sentiments.
The posts included references to Islam as a “pathetic Satanic religion”, a desire to create a website named Islamoutofuk.co.uk and a claim that “most Nigerians are generally bad people”.
Another post read: “Slavery was an act of war. British were the winners. Deal with it – stop being so jealous.”
The tweets also claimed, in a string of posts over several months, that Ed Miliband was “not a real Brit…He was only born here” and suggested the Labour leader was Polish.
Channel 4 News has been unable to contact Mr Lampitt to verify that he sent the tweets. The Twitter account appears to have been deleted.
It is understood that he is still a candidate for local council elections in Merton, south London.
Before the account was taken offline, he described himself on Twitter as: “Born British in Rhodesia and proud of heritage sad at how Britain is run.”
Mr Farage has pledged to root out individuals guilty of “real extremism and nastiness” in the euroscecptic party – which is coming under intense scrutiny ahead of the May 22 European elections.
He has been forced to deal with a string of embarrassments, such as a local councillor who blamed the extreme winter floods on the legalisation of same-sex marriage.