Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has complained to Twitter over a tweet by Brexit campaigner Arron Banks, who has business interests in the Isle of Man, aimed at climate change activist Greta Thunberg.

Mr Banks referred to Ms Thunberg’s sea voyage across the Atlantic and tweeted: ’Freak yachting accidents do happen in August...’

Ms Thunberg, who chooses not to fly, is sailing from the UK to attend UN climate summits in New York and Chile.

Ms Lucas said she reported his comment, while Mr Banks said it was a joke.

’Arron Banks’ vile tweet about @GretaThunberg makes me sick to the stomach,’ Ms Lucas wrote on Twitter.

’I have made a formal complaint to Twitter.’

Shortly after she left, Mr Banks, an insurance tycoon who founded Leave.EU, shared a tweet from Ms Lucas that wished Ms Thunberg ’bon voyage’.

His tweet faced widespread criticism, with Mr Banks later responding, saying it was ’a joke’ and accusing his critics of having ’no sense of humour’.

A spokeswoman from Twitter said: ’We don’t comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.

’We take threats of violence very seriously and take action on accounts if and when the Twitter rules are violated.’

A Twitter source told the BBC the content did not violate its rules.

Mr Banks later added: ’Obviously I don’t hope she encounters a freak yachting accident!

’I just enjoy watching the ludicrous tweeter mob following the next outrage.’

Among those who condemned his post was actress Amanda Abbington, who tweeted: ’You’re wishing a potentially fatal accident onto a sixteen year old girl, why..?’

The novelist Philip Pullman said: ’That’s how you’ll be remembered, Banks. That’s the measure of you.’

Banks’ Manx-based business, Rock Holding Ltd, is under investigation by the National Crime Agency as being the source of a total of £8m in donations to pro-Brexit campaigns during the 2016 referendum, something he has always denied.

Rock Holding Ltd looked likely to be struck off last year after the company gave notice that its registered office had changed to 18 Athol Street, Douglas, from September 28.

But on November 7, the owner of 18 Athol Street, Greystone Trust Company Ltd, filed a statement to Companies Registry, stating that Rock Holding Ltd was not registered at that address.

The business has now been registered at 16 Victoria Street, with a plaque on the street signifying its location.