A Conservative councillor has been suspended by her party after retweeting claims including one saying " mosques are hiding secret arsenals".
Councillor Alanna Vine, who represents Bramhall North, in Stockport, is under investigation and could face expulsion after claiming mosques hid “secret arsenals” of weapons and UK immigration rates were “cultural suicide”.
The “ardent Brexiteer ” had a string of highly controversial retweets which included calls for the UK to refuse all refugees, Manchester Evening News reported.
The council’s Conservative group confirmed the party had begun disciplinary procedures against her following a recent complaint.
A statement by the group reads: “The Conservative Party takes complaints of this nature extremely seriously.
"Councillor Alanna Vine has been suspended from the Conservative Party pending an internal investigation.
"Until that investigation has concluded, we are unable to comment further.”
Among the retweets one post reads “how many mosques have secret arsenals? Just waiting for when our troops are elsewhere in the world”.
Cllr Vine appears to have since "undone" this retweet and it no longer appears on her timeline.
The original post was in response to a tweet whose author claimed to have been “laughed at” for suggesting the UK was facing an invasion of boats.
She retweeted another user who claimed the area of Manchester they said they were born in was “now like being in Somalia”.
The post added: “Hundreds of Somalian ‘asylum seekers’ were placed there many years ago.
"There are 1000’s and 1000’s of them. Seeing is believing, they live no differently than they did in Somalia."
Another post she retweeted encouraged Calvin Robinson, a right-wing commentator, to go onto GB News and say the UK must stop accepting refugees.
It added: “You will have an army behind you. What is happening is a disaster and is not orderly or Christian.”
And she retweeted a post by @JackBarbour_ that said population growth and rates of migration between 2011 and 2021 were “cultural suicide” espousing a long debunked "great replacement" theory.
Cllr Vine has represented Bramhall North since 2011, having previously been the Northern Regional Director of WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) where she worked for more than 10 years.
After leaving WWF, she trained and became a Magistrate on the Inner Manchester Bench for several years, sitting on both the adult and junior benches.
Cllr Vine also sits on the Campaign Task Force for climate change in Stockport and is a member of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.
Cllr Vine refused to comment due to the ongoing investigation.
