Marcus Bernasconi, a Labour party activist, tweeted the screenshot above after spotting what he thought was an Islamophobic comment made by a UKIP MEP.

His tweet received over 30 retweets, including from Labour MP Jamie Reed, before Bernasconi deleted it after a member of UKIP's press team informed him it was a fake account.

Stuart Agnew, UKIP MEP for the Eastern Counties, has never had a Twitter account, a spokesman for UKIP told BuzzFeed News. The spokesman refused to comment on the increase of Twitter accounts purporting to be xenophobic or racist UKIP members.

The Twitter account has already been deleted.