Get all the latest politics news Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

A UKIP candidate has posted a bizarre rant on his Facebook page - attacking mixed marriages and claiming that Europe faces "genocide".

The post by former pub landlord Steve Latham said: "We face Europe's fusion with the Third World. The interracial marriage produces each year thousands of young people of mixed race."

It claimed: "Europeans are being taught to renounce their origin, their national identity".

And it warned: "Everyone must see this truth, that European Integration amounts to genocide."

Mr Latham is standing for UKIP in a council by-election in Sandwell on July 9.

He was also UKIP's Parliamentary candidate for West Bromwich East in the general election.

Genocide is a word usually used to describe the murder of people based on their race or ethnicity, such as organised Nazi murders of Jews and Gypsies or the murder of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

His post appears to have been an edited version of an essay which appeared on a far-right Italian-language website.

It is an attack on Austrian politician Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi, who wrote a book in 1923 setting out plans for a united Europe.

Last year UKIP launched an investigation after Mr Latham posted comments to Facebook claiming "Muslims have infiltrated the Labour Party" and saying Labour had been "infiltrated by the evil cult of Islam".

The Birmingham Mail has approached Mr Latham for a comment.