Nigel Farage

Major internal reforms and a tougher line on immigration are needed after the Stoke defeat

There is little comfort to be found for Ukip from the result of the Stoke by-election. This was an election that we really should have won and many will use this result to argue that Ukip’s role is now over and the party is finished.

I’ve heard it all before. Ukip can have a big future, but it is going to need some radical internal reform. As the Liberal Democrats have shown in years gone by, for an outsider to win a by-election it is vital to get the tactical vote from either Labour or the Tories. Perhaps Ukip’s biggest failure was not to get Tory voters to come across to the party in significant numbers to stop Corbyn’s Labour from winning.

Why is this? In many ways, the party’s election machine is less sophisticated than it was two years ago. But as we can see from opinion polls and the extraordinary win in Copeland, there is currently a bedrock of support for Theresa May, the Prime Minister. Although she backed Remain in the referendum campaign, she has now taken up the mantle of Brexit and made some very strong speeches.

Many in the country believe that when Mrs May says Brexit means Brexit, she really does mean it. There is even some speculation that perhaps Ukip could do a deal with the Tories to defeat Labour as we now have a similar agenda on the key issue of leaving the European Union.

I fully reject this as I believe that voters may well be disappointed with what they get. Already we have seen that there is no desire from the Government to reclaim our territorial fishing waters, and I was shocked when David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, said that free movement of people may continue for many years.

I believe that Ukip needs to bide its time as there will be many Eurosceptics who, by the end of the year, will be asking themselves why this is all taking so long. I still believe that unless this Government is challenged on Brexit every step of the way, we are likely to see a significant watering down of what people believe they voted for on June 23 last year.

I must confess that I got the result of this election wrong and thought that Paul Nuttall would win. However, I did have some grave reservations about the campaign itself, all of which I explained to Paul some weeks ago.

It seems to me that we have taken a step backwards. Simply sending out armies of keen volunteers to knock on every door was not a tactic that I believed could work. Why would you bother speaking to people that didn’t even vote in the historic referendum? I feel we wasted too many of our manhours. The atmosphere in the campaign office was much too much like the Ukip of old; we have to target the electorate in a more scientific and mathematical way.

Paul is going to have a tough job on his hands to move aside people who have been in position for years and are simply not up to what a modern political party needs to do to win. In many ways, the hardest part of leading Ukip is the internal management. That said, Paul will have many strong friends and donors around him to carry out this vital task.

There are those inside the party that believe Ukip needs to become more mainstream in its policy statements. Douglas Carswell and those around him feel awkward and embarrassed at the subject of immigration and think we should soft pedal on this issue. Indeed our platform in Stoke was not particularly strong on control of our borders.

My view is that Ukip is a radical party, or it is nothing. As this week’s immigration statistics show, a staggering 74,000 people came into Britain from Romania and Bulgaria alone last year. This figure is higher than anyone would have suggested back in 2014. Attitudes are hardening across the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union, too. It is the issue in British politics that Ukip needs to own, because once Article 50 is triggered, I fear there may be a flood of people rushing to get into our country before – as they see it – the door closes.

Despite my criticisms of the campaign and my disappointment with the result, there are still millions of Ukip voters out there. They are happy and pleased that by switching their vote to Ukip they were able to get an EU referendum and ultimately get historic change in our country.

With Jeremy Corbyn remaining as Labour leader, I am confident that we can push harder still into the old Labour vote. I am also confident that Paul Nuttall is still the right man to do this and he has my full support. There are inevitably highs and lows leading any political party and this will have been a very bruising experience for our leader. As I said before, what he must do now is bide his time and wait for opportunities that will come again. He must own the immigration issue in a way that no other party can, and he needs to make radical internal reforms.

I have known Paul for many years. He is a good man who is fiercely patriotic and wants to do the right thing. There are many that will help him achieve what this party is capable of. And for those who are pleased by our disappointment in Stoke, I say this: You’ve not heard the last of Ukip yet.