The Liberal Democrat running to become MP for Luton South has been dramatically suspended by the party after a MailOnline investigation revealed that he made a series of disturbing anti-Semitic posts on social media.

Ashuk Ahmed, 51 – who was given an award at the House of Lords for ‘inspirational role models for British Muslims’ – will no longer contest the seat, a Liberal Democrat spokesman confirmed.

Mr Ahmed posted a series of posts comparing Jews to Nazis, suggesting that Zionists controlled ‘half the world’ and claiming that Labour and the Conservatives were controlled by ‘Zionist paymasters’.

Among the offensive posts and shares, which were made in 2014, were images of the Israeli prime minister eating children and the slogan, ‘blood sucking leech’.

On one occasion, he wrote: ‘Zionists control half the world, we are the other half. So let’s make a lot more noise.’ He also suggested that the Labour and Conservative parties are controlled by ‘Zionist paymasters’.

Mr Ahmed also shared a video made by an extreme anti-Semitic group AshkeNazi, which claims to ‘expose… the current takeover of the United States by the Jewish Ashkenazi tribe’.

Mr Ahmed, a community worker who was awarded an MBE in the 2009 Queen’s birthday honours in recognition of his services to young people, also spread the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that ISIS was created by ‘Jewish media and their gentile pawns’ in order to ‘justify more slaughter’.