In the same year, senior Conservative MP Sajid Javid tweeted that Bell's cartoon - depicting former Home Secretary Priti Patel and ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson as bulls with rings through their noses - was "incredibly offensive".

    Mr Javid said it was "reminiscent of antisemitic cartoons from the last century," adding the Guardian "should know better".

It all smacks of want to cast shade over The Guardian's cartoons, which is an understandable position but these "reasons" seem pretty thin.

> Moneylender Shylock, from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, is considered to be one of the most notorious Jewish stereotypes in English literature due to his greedy nature.

> In the Bard's famous play, Shylock asks for a pound of Antonio's flesh a loan isn't repaid within three months.

Seems like the right call not to publish it, but not sure I see how the cartoon would have been referring to the “pound of flesh” from that description.

http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/Cartoon...

The reference then is very obvious. One might of course try to imply that the changes were made to intentionally change the context and reference Shylock and that the reference is just a smokescreen, but to me at least it seems contrived and driven by the same willingness to just view everything in the worst possible light when it is convenient that pervade the British press.

Bell has been a thorn in the sides of a lot of people for a long time, so I'm not surprised.