The treasurer of Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party has been dismissed, after he was revealed to have made a series of comments on social media invoking antisemitic tropes. 

Michael McGough, who previously served as a senior member of Ukip and stood as a parliamentary candidate for the party three times, quit the party last December in protest against what he described as the “national socialist…toxic” direction it had taken under its new leader, Gerard Batten.

However, social media posts, discovered by the Guardian, showed that Mr McGough had made a series of posts in 2017 about Jews, Muslims and other minority groups.

According to the Guardian, Mr McGough described David and Ed Miliband, who are both Jewish, and Peter Mandelson, whose father is Jewish, as having “the shortest of roots. Transient folk, they have no loyalty to the UK.”

Another Facebook post referred to David Miliband as the “son of an east European communist now milking it from a charity in New York and devoid of UK roots”, while in a third, Mr McGough said: “I resent being called racist by an old queen with shallow UK roots.”

The suggestion that Jews have “shallow roots” is a longstanding antisemitic trope – suggesting that Jews are less loyal to the country they live in.

Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl said that the party “did the right thing” in removing Mr McGough from his position.

She added that the Brexit Party would “need to institute rigorous anti-racist procedures and policies to ensure this doesn’t keep happening.”