Katie Hopkins to leave LBC over 'final solution' tweet

Right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins is leaving her presenting job at radio station LBC after echoing Nazi terminology in a Twitter tirade following Monday night's suicide bombing in Manchester.

Hopkins, who is famous for her polarising right-wing rhetoric, is no stranger to accusations of xenophobia and bigotry – she once compared migrants to "cockroaches".

The morning after the Manchester attack, in which 22 people died, Hopkins fired off a string of tweets about Islamist terror, at one point urging "Western men" to "rise up".

Hopkins then concluded by saying: "We need a final solution" – the infamous term used by Nazi Germany to describe their efforts to eradicate the Jewish people. Six million Jews were exterminated in mass shootings and gas chambers as the Nazi government pursued the policy.

The former Apprentice contestant deleted the tweet and replaced it with an edited version which spoke of a "true solution", but the original tweet had already sparked a firestorm of accusations that Hopkins was advocating genocide.

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that it received complaints about the comments, The Independent reports, although the force has not said whether or not it will launch an investigation.

In a tweet, LBC confirmed that Hopkins would be leaving the station, where she has been hosting a weekly discussion show, "effective immediately":

BBC media editor Amol Rajan tweeted that he had it on good authority that the announcement of Hopkins's departure met with "massive cheers and applause" in the LBC newsroom:

The news that she would no longer be on the nation's airwaves met with a rapturous response from her detractors, although some of Hopkins's listeners criticised LBC for "giving in" to pressure to silence her.