This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labour has called for Boris Johnson to dismiss a new Downing Street staff member who has praised the work of a far-right, anti-Islam politician, while anti-racism campaigners expressed alarm at her appointment.

Chloe Westley, who will lead Johnson’s social media team at No 10, sent a now-deleted tweet in 2016 praising Anne Marie Waters as “a hero”. Waters, who has close links to the jailed anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, leads the far-right For Britain party.

The deleted tweet. Photograph: Twitter

Waters co-founded the UK branch of the anti-Islam group Pegida alongside Robinson, has links to former BNP members and has described Islam as “evil”.

She stood to be leader of Ukip before quitting the party to form For Britain. The party argues that the UK’s Muslim population is causing a crisis, as it is growing rapidly and has beliefs that cannot be incorporated into a liberal democracy.

Jon Trickett, the shadow cabinet office minister, said: “It is profoundly shocking that someone who holds these views should be at the heart of government. She should never have been appointed in the first place and Mr Johnson must now move swiftly to dismiss her.”

Matthew McGregor, the campaigns director of group Hope Not Hate, said: “Anne Marie Waters leads a far-right party with virulent Islamophobia at its core. Calling her a hero was a serious error of judgment, as Westley later admitted. This appointment is deeply concerning.”

A Downing Street source confirmed Westley’s appointment, but gave no further comment.

However, a source close to Westley said she regretted the comment and that at the time she did not know Waters’ beliefs, which she did not support or endorse, and believed were “reprehensible”.

Before the tweet was sent, Waters had been recorded while standing for Ukip in the 2015 general election calling for mosques to be closed and for a complete halt on all Muslim immigration to the UK.

She was also barred by Ukip from standing for the party in the 2016 London assembly elections because of her role in Pegida.

Westley has close links to the UK branch of Turning Point (TPUK), a pro-Donald Trump youth movement that has been accused in the US of anti-Islam views and connections to racism.

She attended the first UK meeting of TPUK and is close to several of its members. The group has been backed by some Conservatives, among them Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel, both of whom are new members of the Johnson government.

TPUK was co-founded by George Farmer, a Conservative donor and son of a Tory peer, who has been pictured socialising with Paul Joseph Watson, a senior editor at the far-right conspiracy theory website Infowars, and has frequently retweeted him. Farmer is no longer directly involved in TPUK.

Farmer has called the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, a “grade A twat” and a “virtue signalling cuck”.

In June, Westley appeared in a mock-comedy TPUK video called “Shit champagne socialists say”.

She moved to No 10 from the lobby group Taxpayers’ Alliance, which claims to be an independent grassroots campaign representing British taxpayers but refuses to identify its donors.

Last year, it emerged that the group, part of a rightwing network that promotes free-market capitalism around the world, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in overseas donations, including $100,000 originating from a billionaire-founded religious trust incorporated in the Bahamas.

This week, Westley tweeted that she hoped a Johnson government would abolish the TV licence, start a “bonfire of unnecessary quangos” and launch a “pro-freedom” budget.

chloe westley (@LoveWestley) Imagine. Boris wins. Out of the EU by Oct 31st. Pro-freedom budget, tax cuts for all. HS2 scrapped. TV tax scrapped. Bonfire of unnecessary quangos. No more billions sent to Brussels. IMAGINE.

Downing Street had no comment on the tweet.

• This article was amended on 28 July 2019. An earlier version stated that TPUK is headed by George Farmer. This has been corrected.