PLAID CYMRU faced calls yesterday to remove one of its general election candidates after it emerged he once compared English-born residents of rural Wales to nazis.

Mike Parker, who is standing for the party in Ceredigion, made the remark in an article in 2001 when he was working as a travel writer.

In the piece he said rural Wales had become the “British equivalent of the American mountains inhabited by a sprinkling of paranoid conspiracy theorists, gun-toting final solution crackpots and anti-government obsessives.”

It went on: “Add to these the thousands of small-minded Little Englanders who have transferred their phobias from the black and Asian populations of their native cities to ‘the Welsh’ or ‘the Taffia’ in their new locales and there is room for much ill-feeling and even trouble.”

Mr Parker added in a statement that he would no longer use such “high-octane” vocabulary to express himself but insisted racism should always be challenged.

But Plaid is now being urged to deselect him as its candidate for the seat.

Labour candidate Huw Thomas called the comments “deeply offensive” and “exactly the sort of poisonous rhetoric you’d expect from Ukip, not a party that claims to be progressive and left-wing.”

A Plaid spokeswoman said the article was written almost 15 years ago and that Mr Parker now recognises the language he used was inappropriate.

“He was reacting to some very negative and belittling comments he heard at that time as someone who had moved to Ceredigion from Kidderminster himself,” the spokeswoman said.

“Mike has always fiercely opposed racism and discrimination of any kind and in this article he was expressing concern about racist attitudes that he had encountered.”