Fury over Ukip's European alliance with holocaust deniers

Ukip is facing widespread criticism for its alliance with a Polish far-right party that has been accused of making anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic comments.

Robert Iwaszkiewicz from the Polish Congress of the New Right has been invited to join Nigel Farage's eurosceptic alliance in the European party, known as the EFDD. Ukip required an MEP from another country to join in order to preserve the alliance's existence and secure access to extra funding, The Guardian explains.

The marriage has been described as a "squalid deal" by the Daily Telegraph's Iain Martin who says Ukip will "make millions out of the partnership".

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The move has angered the Jewish community in the UK who accuse the party's controversial leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke of being a Hitler apologist and a holocaust denier.

"For Ukip to choose such a figure as a bedfellow, apparently for money is beyond belief," the Board of Deputies of British Jews told the International Business Times.

Farage's decision to form a partnership with the party shows "that racist and anti-Semitic statements are no barrier to Ukip", it said.

The party in Korwin-Mikke's own words:

• Adolf Hitler was "probably not aware that the Jews were being exterminated"
• Women should not be allowed to vote
• The difference between rape and consensual sex is "very subtle"
• The minimum wage should be "destroyed"
• Europeans are treated like n*****s under the minimum wage

Iwaszkiewicz is also no stranger to controversy, either. He recently told a Polish newspaper that hitting women could "help them come back down to earth", although he later claimed he was being sarcastic. Farage has also shrugged off the comment as a "joke".

Labour MP Michael Dugher said the deal would undoubtedly offend the British public. "Here are Ukip forming an alliance with a far-right party in Europe that denies the fact that millions were murdered in the Holocaust, in order to keep receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds from the European Parliament," he told the Evening Standard.

Even Marine Le Penn, leader of France's national front has dissociated herself from the Polish group because it is "too extreme", the BBC reports.

Korwin-Mikke denies the allegations of racism and sexism, saying many of his comments were "ironic" and made in jest. Nigel Farage came to his defence, saying he had not seen any evidence that Korwin-Mikke was an extremist. A Ukip spokesperson told the Jewish Chronicle that the party "abhor[s] and reject[s] any scent of antisemitism."

A Jewish Ukip member has defended the move saying that while Iwaszkiewicz was a "distinctly unsavory person", the alliance was a "marriage of convenience".