Get tougher on immigration, Farage tells Ukip
NIGEL Farage said Ukip needs to base its electoral strategy around a tougher stance on immigration.
The former party leader spoke out yesterday after his successor Paul Nuttall failed to defeat Labour in Thursday’s Stoke Central by-election.
Mr Farage received a rapturous standing ovation from Americans as he addressed the Conservative Political Action Congress rally with US President Donald Trump in Maryland.
Speaking ahead of his speech at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Mr Farage said: “I feel sorry for Paul Nuttall. He fought a hard campaign.
“I think there are some lessons to learn from it in terms of how we campaign, in terms of how we target.
“There is a debate in Ukip as to how strong we should be on the immigration issue. I personally think we should own it.
“So we will have to look at that and think were we really tough enough, were we clear enough with the electorate? It has got to be looked at.”
Mr Nuttall has vowed that “Ukip’s time will come” after Labour’s Gareth Snell won in Stoke Central to become the city’s new MP. Mr Snell secured 7,853 votes to his Ukip challenger’s 5,233.
It means that a city which voted by almost 70 per cent for Leave during last year’s EU referendum has been lumbered with an MP who infamously tweeted that “Brexit is s***” and was forced to apologise for sexist and offensive posts on social media.
Speaking after the result, Mr Nuttall said Ukip was “not going anywhere”. He added: “There’s a lot more to come from us.” Ukip chairman Paul Oakden praised Mr Nuttall. He said: “I think it was incredibly courageous of him to put his head above the parapet and stand to be the candidate for our party in this election. “He did it to unify our party. I think by the evidence of the number of people who came up to support Paul during this campaign, that is what happened.” But Ukip defence spokesman Bill Etheridge told the Daily Express that “the people advising Paul [Nuttall] are trying to drag Ukip to the centre at just the time the public wants a challenging radical party”. Mr Etheridge, a West Midlands MEP, said he knows “from experience” that Stoke “would have been won if we had a strong immigration message instead of banging on about the NHS”.