A Reform UK councillor has been labelled a “racist” and accused of posting “xenophobic conspiracy theories” by a Labour councillor, after questioning whether migrants and their children should be allowed to stand for elected office.

Essex county councillor Carl Johnson posted a picture of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood next to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and wrote “we have been deliberately infiltrated”.

Labour county councillor Lee Scordis called on Reform to “expel him immediately”.

Johnson and his party have both since defended his right to free speech.

“Open debate and free speech should not be shut down simply because others disagree with a particular viewpoint,” said Johnson, speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

Johnson shared the image of the two prominent Labour politicians on Wednesday.

In his accompanying message, he wrote: “We have allowed people who arrived as asylum seekers to settle and then have second generations, gain positions of political power, and then push to change our laws to better reflect their own religion and culture.

“That is unacceptable. No foreigner should ever be allowed to stand for political office in this country.”

The Facebook post has since been removed from the page of councillor Carl Johnson and the BBC contacted him for a response.

Both the home secretary and London mayor were born in the UK and are the second generation of migrant families.

Scordis said the Reform councillor had suggested that politicians like Winston Churchill and Rishi Sunak, who had at least one parent born abroad, “could not be elected in any role, let alone prime minister”.

A Reform spokesperson said: “[The party] is committed to net-negative migration and will prioritise the needs of the British people.

“Councillor Johnson is entitled to his own personal views.”

The Braintree Conservatives said they “strongly oppose these remarks, and the obsession of some Reform politicians openly challenging the identity of Britons born in this country”.

Meanwhile, Essex County Council said it was “aware of the social media post by councillor Carl Johnson” but would not comment on whether a complaint had been received.

Johnson told the LDRS: “My concern is that individuals who hold positions of political influence in the UK should always act in the interests of this country and its people.

“There have been well-publicised cases where questions have been raised about political figures advocating positions that appear to place the interests of other countries, cultures or ideologies above those of the United Kingdom.”

The home secretary’s parents immigrated from Kashmir, and Khan’s from Pakistan.

Earlier this year, Mahmood told the BBC that friends and family had recently experienced racist slurs “when they had gone 20 years without hearing those words said to them”.

“I think we’re living in a more divisive, more polarised world. I think social media has a lot to do with sending hateful, divisive stuff through the algorithms,” she said, speaking in January.

Johnson did not refer to them directly in his post, but the image he shared of them included the caption: “One changing our capital city, the other bringing in Islam in the thousands.”

The Facebook post, before it was removed, had received 14,000 interactions and more than 3,000 comments.

He is the county councillor for Three Fields and Great Notley, which includes MDP Wethersfield, where hundreds of asylum seekers are accommodated.

The Reform leader of Essex County Council Peter Harris has also been approached for comment.

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