A cartoon by the Guardian’s Steve Bell which was spiked because it “conjured up an image of the Holocaust” has been described as a “clanger” and “insensitively and counter productively ill-judged”.

The verdict from Guardian readers’ editor Paul Chadwick comes two weeks after the cartoon was leaked online amid a public row between Bell and the newspaper in which he claimed he had been “censored”.

Bell also said Guardian editor Kath Viner had set an “unfortunate precedent” by not publishing the image.