A Holocaust denier, who dismissed the horrors of Auschwitz by suggesting inmates could go swimming and raise complaints to the commandant, has been expelled from Labour - 18 months after he was suspended.

Chris Crookes, a member of Labour International for party members living abroad, was allegedly first reported to the party's compliance unit in 2016, for an article he wrote in 2012 entitled "The Human Face of Holocaust Revisionism".

He included the ideas that prisoners at Auschwitz enjoyed access to a swimming pool and cinema, that not a single infant died there and that the camp's commandant Rudolf Hoss “had a standing order that any inmate could approach him personally to register a complaint about other inmates…or even guards.”

Mr Crookes described the Holocaust in his piece as "a mythology that is taboo, that cannot be questioned in nations throughout Europe under penalty of prosecution and imprisonment...a widespread and accepted mythology that demonizes the Germans unfairly."

In reality, more than a million people were murdered at Auschwitz. Though there was a swimming pool, this was for the guards, not prisoners.

In May, Buzzfeed, which did not name Mr Crookes, reported that the compliance unit took no action in his case until October 2017, and even then, it took until March 2018 for him to be suspended.

Jon Lansman, the head of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group,then suggested Labour staff "from the Labour right may have delayed action on some of the most extreme and high-profile antisemitism cases, including Holocaust denial, allowing a backlog of cases to build up that would damage the party and Jeremy’s leadership.”

Mr Lansman also suggested that, because the party’s National Executive Committee was no longer led by “Blairites” and Mr Corbyn's ally Jennie Formby had become the party's general secretary, its processes had improved.

Last week, Mike Crosland, chair of Labour International in the Netherlands, tweeted that he was “delighted that a Holocaust denier from our CLP has finally been expelled…nothing was done for 15 months under McNicoll’s watch. He was finally suspended after Jenny [sic] Formby had been in office just three days.”

But the “Labour International Moderates” Twitter account responded: “The man appears a full on Nazi Holocaust denier, yet following suspension he remained a member under Jennie Formby’s watch for a further 18 months.”

The account said that various activists had used this case “to claim Labour is tough on antisemitism, but the reality is that the EHRC [the equalities watchdog investigating Labour antisemitism] has scared the party into action.”

A Labour spokesperson confirmed Mr Crookes had been expelled from the party last week.

Party sources claimed that the delay had been due to slow NCC processes and that "last year at conference we agreed to double the size of the NCC."

They also said Mr Corbyn had "recently proposed measures to speed up the expulsion procedure for the most serious cases, so that we no longer have to wait for the NCC", but did not indiciate whether this proposal was made since the EHRC began its investigation.