LABOUR defector Harriet Yeo, who defected to Ukip in February, once compared her new party to the nazis.

The former chair of Labour’s national executive committee made the gaffe as part of a “joke” about Hitler on social media.

A party spokesman dismissed the remark, made on Twitter two years ago, as a “lighthearted” comment.

Yet when pranksters likened Nigel Farage to a fascist last week by drawing a toothbrush moustache on billboard posters, Ms Yeo said she was disgusted.

The ex-president of transport union TSSA, now Ukip’s parliamentary candidate in Folkstone and Hythe, spoke out after the vandalism at several poster sites across the constituency.

“I’m a quarter Jewish and people band the word ‘fascist’ about,” she said. “If they knew what it really means, then they would be ashamed of themselves.”

Speaking to the Folkestone Herald, she added: “If they knew what Hitler stood for, I think it’s disgusting to liken Nigel Farage to that.”

However, two years ago Ms Yeo — who followed her daughter Angharad to Ukip earlier this year — made a similar remark on her Twitter account.

Tweeting as @shookyshiner, Ms Yeo described visiting London’s Madame Tussaud’s with her granddaughter who wanted her picture taken standing next to a waxwork she called “him.”

The tweet read: “‘Him’ was Hitler! Ah well, she has a Ukip mum!”

Ms Yeo stepped in to fight the Kent seat after the party’s first-choice candidate Janice Atkinson was expelled in an expenses row.

A Ukip spokesman dismissed Ms Yeo’s comments about Hitler as jokes.

He said: “To suggest that she was anything other than lighthearted in her other comments is risible.”