An MBE awarded to the rapper Wiley is officially under review following his antisemitic rants on social media last month,  the Cabinet Office has confirmed.

The Honours Committee had now  launched an investigation into Wiley’s actions.

The Cabinet Office said that the Honours Forfeiture Committee “is able to consider cases for a variety of reasons” including “being found guilty of a criminal offence” and “behaviour that is deemed to bring the honours system into disrepute”.

Wiley – whose real name is  Richard Cowie – was permanently suspended from Twitter and Facebook after sharing a series of antisemitic posts in July.

He had described Jewish people as “cowards and snakes” and made comparisons to the Ku Klux Klan. He also made reference to a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Wiley was appointed an MBE in the 2018 New Years Honours for his services to music.

But interviewed by Sky News last week the 41-year-old grime artist said of his MBE: “Take it back. I’ve never had it in my possession except for a picture outside Buckingham Palace.”

He added: “Now who’s the MBE for, really? Don’t think I was sitting there like ‘Where’s my MBE? Where’s my OBE? I need my knighthood. Where’s my Richard Branson? No.”

A spokesperson for the rapper’s former manager John Woolf later confirmed that Wiley’s MBE is his possession, waiting to be collected by the rapper.