A LABOUR councillor has been suspended by the party over a tweet that compared Tory policies to the Nazi treatment of Jewish people.

Mark Cherry a county councillor for Banbury Calthorpe, was criticised after the tweet appeared on his timeline on Monday.

Banbury MP Sir Tony Baldry has written to Labour leader Ed Miliband describing the tweet as “intolerable”.

Mr Cherry, who was elected to Oxfordshire County Council last year, said that his Twitter account had been hacked and that he had reported it to police.

He said: “I am disgusted by anything antisemitic. Both my parents fought in the Second World War.

“I have done as much as I can.

“It is almost like it is some kind of witch-hunt.”

Mr Cherry is also a member of Cherwell District Council and Banbury Town Council.

A Labour Party spokesman said he has been suspended pending an investigation.

Dan Sames, a Conservative district councillor, said he was shocked by the tweet and has written to the leaders of the Labour group on each of the three local authorities Mr Cherry sits on.

He said: “I found the imagery to be deeply disturbing and as a Jewish person extremely offensive.

“The Holocaust was a genocide... it is abhorrent that anyone with a shred of moral decency should ever try to compare their systematic execution with Government policy regardless of an individual’s view on such policy.”

As of yesterday, the district and county councils said they had received no formal complaints against Mr Cherry.

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