Ukip leader Nigel Farage faced more embarrassment yesterday as the party suspended a member featured in an election broadcast for expressing “repellent” views on social media.

Andre Lampitt, who was seeking to become a local election candidate for the right-wing party, appeared in a builder’s hard hat in the broadcast complaining that “since the lads from eastern Europe” had arrived, he had found it a “real struggle” to provide for his family.

But he is reported to have posted Islamophobic and racist comments on Twitter, including references to Islam as a “pathetic Satanic religion” and a claim that “most Nigerians are generally bad people.”

He also claimed, in a string of posts over several months, that Ed Miliband was “not a real Brit” but in fact Polish.

Ukip has been forced to deal with several similar embarrassments, such as a local councillor who blamed winter floods on the legalisation of same-sex marriage.