NIGEL Farage’s Brexit Party has been accused of selecting a candidate for a Scottish constituency who made “abhorrent racist” comments.

Writing under the pseudonym Moraymint, Moray candidate Mark Nash called for mosques to be bulldozed and for the “cancer” of Islam in the UK to be “crushed out of existence”.

In one post, the retired RAF officer, who lives in Elgin, wrote: “We’re at war with Islam, to all intents and purposes, but the last people in our country to acknowledge this at the moment are – ironically – the people elected to govern us.”

He continued: “If the Muslim community resists this change of attitude by our society, to its place in our society and the implications for the religion and its followers, then Islam in the UK should be crushed out of existence.”

On another online post, the Brexit Party candidate railed against what he called the “Establishment”.

He wrote: “Call me a fascist if you like, but I’ll lay money that right now our society is regressing to the Middle Ages for as long as the Establishment insists on talking to us about ‘So-Called Islamic State’.”

Shortly after the London Bridge terror attacks in 2017, Nash even called for mosques to be monitored and controlled. He wrote: “We must be able and willing to monitor and control that which goes on in mosques, certainly for as long as there is any suspicion whatsoever that mosques are breeding grounds for fanatics.

“In so doing, we must have the legal powers to counter ‘bad’ mosques and, rather like we’d tackle an errant licenced premises, we must be able to close down mosques if that’s deemed to be best for society; bulldoze them to rubble if necessary.”

And in one post, which he caveats by claiming he’s using “black, military humour”, he calls for a “full, frank and forensic analysis of the pros and cons of Islam in our society”.

“Not ‘radical Islam’, or, ‘Hard Islam’, or ‘Soft Islam’ (the politicos are trying that one with Brexit), or ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, or ‘Islamic Jihad’, but Islam.

“We need to take the religion of Islam off its pedestal, take off our kid gloves, lambast [sic] and ridicule Islam, draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, bring the Enlightenment to bear on Islam, scrub bandying about the preposterous term ‘hate crime’ and move to eliminate (rather than protect and promote) the Medieval, politico-religious creed that is a cancer in our society – before it eliminates us.

“Forget ‘moderate Islam’ and ‘radical Islam’ – we need to talk about Islam. Full stop. Every day we don’t discuss Islam, we move a day closer to the Caliphate. It’s not difficult.”

Nash was announced as a Brexit Party candidate yesterday morning. When we approached him, he referred us to the party’s press office.

They initially declined to comment, but a spokesman last night then claimed to us that Nash had in fact failed vetting and was never supposed to be a candidate. His name, they said, had been added to a press release “in error”.

Labour MSP Anas Sarwar, who chairs Holyrood’s Cross-Party Group on Tackling Islamophobia, had called for the Brexit Party to “do the right thing” and deselect Nash.

He said: “These abhorrent racist comments have no place in Scottish society. This serves as a stark reminder that we have so much work still to do to make Scotland the tolerant, inclusive country we should aim for.

“The fight against hatred is a fight for all of us. As for this particular candidate, the Brexit Party should do the right thing and deselect him and consider what disciplinary action it will take.”

An SNP spokeswoman said the comments were “completely unacceptable”. She added: “The Brexit Party must remove Mr Nash as a candidate as soon as possible, but they also need to explain how someone with such clearly Islamophobic views was selected in the first place.

“Racism must not be tolerated in our society, and all political parties must play their part in eradicating this kind of vile discrimination.”

Nash, who also sits on the committee of the Forres branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, was a member of the Scottish Tories until April.

According to a Moraymint blog post, he was personally vetted for the candidacy by Farage in a 10-minute phone call. The former Ukip leader, who left partly due to Gerard Batten’s “fixation” with Islam, had promised his new party would be “deeply intolerant of all intolerance”.