A councillor who posted an offensive tweet which appeared to liken the Tories' economic policy to that of the Nazis has been suspended from the Labour Party.

Rosemary Healy published a doctored image of a Conservative election poster showing the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on her social media account on Tuesday.

She had retweeted the picture after it was initially posted as an apparent joke by another user.

It showed the Tory slogan “Let’s stay on the road to a strong economy” superimposed on the Birkenau train tracks.

Ms Healy, a Nottingham City Council member, later apologised, writing to her 1,600 followers: “Profound apologies for that retweet which was a genuine mistake and would never have been retweeted had I recognised it for what it was.”

The leader of the authority’s Tory group said the post had “trivialised the horrors of the Holocaust”.

Mike Freer, Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green, said the tweet showed Labour had “plumbed the depths”.