A Conservative Hertsmere Borough councillor who abused the Labour Party General Election candidate, Holly Kal-Weiss, at a hustings in Radlett is to be investigated.

The Council’s Standards Assessment Panel was of a view that Cllr Anthony Spencer attended the hustings at the United Radlett Synagogue in a official capacity and that the evidence supplied by Holly Kal-Weiss disclosed grounds for considering that he conducted himself in a manner that failed to treat her with respect.

The Conservative councillor caused an uproar when he shouted at Holly Kal-Weiss that she wasn’t British. He then tried to make an issue of an old photo of Kal-Weiss at a woman’s march in Washington where the person next to her had a Palestinian flag.

The infuriated chair, eminent QC, Jeffrey Gruder, told Cllr Spencer, “You are, with due respect, disgracing yourself. Sit down. You are a councillor.” Cheers and claps came from the audience.

The incident was captured on video by a member of the audience and distanced from by Conservative candidate – now MP and minister – Oliver Dowden.

Following the decision, Holly Kal-Weiss said: “Cllr Spencer came armed with a libelous social media post on his phone to harass me in a public forum. Why did he feel the need to comment on my Britishness at all? And why did he scoff at my comment that ‘I am as British as you’? The Nolan principles, broken by Spencer, require that we expect more from our elected representatives.”