The UK Independence party has a three-point lead for this month’s European election – but most people think the party contains racists, according to an opinion poll.

Nigel Farage’s party is on 29%, ahead of Labour on 26%, the Conservatives on 23% and Liberal Democrats on 10%. But 27% of those surveyed thought Ukip was a party with “racist views” and “many racist members”, while 35% thought that, while the party was not racist, it did “seem to attract some candidates or supporters with racist, extreme or odd views”. Some 26% said Ukip was not racist and their “more controversial candidates are just saying the things ordinary people actually think”.

The poll came as Ukip suspended another would-be councillor for expressing extreme views on Twitter. Harry Perry posted comments on Twitter describing the prime minister, David Cameron, as a “gay-loving nutcase”, Muslims as “devil’s kids” and homosexuality as “an abomination before God”.

Farage accepted there were “some idiots” in the party as he condemned Perry’s comments as “entirely inconsistent” with remaining in Ukip.

Observer, 4 May 2014

A Conservative candidate in the upcoming Brentwood Borough Council elections has resigned over anti-Islamic and homophobic Tweets.

David Bishop posted “It’s good to be anti-Islam” two days before he was cemented as the party’s candidate for the Brentwood South ward in the Brentwood Borough Council elections later this month.

The tweet included a link to controversial ‘comedian’ Pat Condell who has attracted criticism in the past for the inflammatory nature of his online rants.

In the video a clearly animated Mr Condell accuses Islam of the sexualisation of young girls, “aggressive separatism, “phoney grievance mongering” and a “psychopathic level of misogyny”.

Two days after being named the Tory’s candidate the Zero Radio DJ reposted a Tweet made from another account which cites the arrest of four Muslim men over the rape of a 14-year-old girl before adding “’#Islam ‘the religion of peace’ & rape”.

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Stephen Lees, a long-term Conservative activist, has tweeted that all Muslims should be expelled from Britain, and all mosques demolished. His Tweet came a few minutes after he tweeted a link to a Telegraph article entitled “Head teachers raise ‘serious concerns’ over Islamic school take-over”.

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