A university lecturer does not have the right to be anti-PC, an employment judge has ruled, after he claimed that left-wing colleagues “hounded” him out.

Dr Andrew Dunn was, until recently, a senior lecturer in social policy at Lincoln University. But after a series of spats with fellow academics he was repeatedly disciplined and eventually dismissed from his post.

As part of a claim for unfair dismissal, he told an employment tribunal how the university’s “discrimination” against him started in early 2015 when his career was "really taking off".

Dr Dunn, who is the branch chairman for Ukip in Lincoln and stood as a candidate for the party in last year’s council elections, published a book titled Rethinking Unemployment and the Work Ethic.

In his book he explains that while benefit claimants generally want jobs, many remain on benefits because they are “too choosy” in the jobs they are willing to do.

He says that these arguments are unfashionable and so are rarely acknowledged by left-leaning social policy academics, which leads to government policies based on a flawed understanding of the issue.

Dr Dunn, 45, set up a Twitter account in January 2015 to promote his new book but was attacked when he posted an article summarising his academic research, with some labelling him a “Tory bigot”.