Carl Benjamin, a UKIP candidate who used racist and offensive language in a social media video, has had his Twitter account suspended.

:: Warning – This article contains racist and offensive language

It is not clear why the account has been taken down but it comes a day after Sky News revealed Mr Benjamin had posted a video in 2015 where he called a disabled person a “retard” and an Asian person a “chink”.

UKIP tweeted: “Official UKIP MEP campaign account @CarlUKIP of which Carl Benjamin has no access to has been suspended from Twitter.

“This is election interference and UKIP will get to the bottom of this.”

Later the party tweeted to Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey, saying: “This is a gross display of electoral interference. @Jack why is your company interfering in UK elections?”

Mr Benjamin, who describes himself as a “free speech extremist”, is standing as the South West candidate for UKIP in the EU elections.

The video was originally an anti-discrimination campaign, but Mr Benjamin did his own commentary over the top.

It features a group of people criticising the use of offensive terms. An Asian woman, for example, says it is not acceptable to call people “chink”.

But Mr Benjamin replies: “You lose! It’s actually fine. It’s actually just f****** fine and I’ll tell you why. Because Asians are privileged.”

There were also antisemitic pictures posted over an image of a Jewish man who asked people not to use the word “kike”.

Mr Benjamin has also recently been criticised for tweeting that he “wouldn’t even rape” Labour MP Jess Phillips.

Regarding the video, Mr Benjamin had told Sky News: “Personally, I find racist jokes funny.”

When asked if it was okay to joke about rape with regards to the comment about Ms Phillips, he replied “yes”.

Mr Benjamin also said: “I tell you what. They can go and have a cry, and when they’ve collected themselves and they’re ready to talk like an adult about the issues and not bring up things that they think might be offensive and spread them around the country to people who might be offended by them, then we can have a sensible conversation about the issues.”

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