A Ukip candidate for the general election has been suspended after a series of racist tweets emerged.
Paddy Singh, who was standing in North Wiltshire, posted abusive messages about Jews, Africans and other groups. The party said it would hold a “full investigation” into the tweets and was “withdrawing support for [Singh’s] candidacy” at next month’s general election.
Tweets from Singh’s account accused Jews and Israelis of emulating the Nazis in their relations with Palestine and wondered whether the Holocaust was a bad thing. He also attacked Pakistanis and said that Africans were “animals”.
Ukip’s spokesman said the party felt it “had no choice but to withdraw our endorsement as a candidate and will conduct a full investigation”.
Singh apologised, saying that he accepted the suspension and would continue to support Ukip’s agenda. He insisted the comments were not racist in nature, but a “spontaneous reaction” to news articles he had read.
“These have been misinterpreted and are honestly, from my side, more of a reaction that goes through one’s mind over an article... I am not anti anyone or anything and certainly not intolerant, even when I sometimes don’t agree with the over tolerance of the British,” he told the Guardian.
He added that his comments about Jews and Israel, including those comparing them to the Nazis, were related to the foreign policy pursued by the latter’s government and that he was not anti-semitic. He stressed that he had also criticised other governments on occasion.
Asked how his comments should be characterised, if not as racist, he said he had “over-reacted” but felt people would understand him comparing Jews to Nazis if they had read Brian Eno’s 2014 letter on the Israel-Gaza crisis. He added that he has a friend whose family survived the Holocaust.
And he said that, when he referred to Africans as “animals”, he meant only that they were being treated as such by “despots” on that continent.
He had previously told the BBC that he had “never been racist” and “condemned anyone who is,”, adding that he “did not mean to cause any offence or be racist”.
The tweets were brought to light by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, which called Singh’s Twitter feed a “reliable fount of wild racism and antisemitism”.
North Wiltshire is a safe Tory seat. The party got 57.2% of the vote in 2015 and has a 21,046 majority over the Liberal Democrats, who were second with 15.6%. The Ukip candidate was third with 11.5% of the vote.
