New Ukip leader: We’re ready to wipe out Labour
UKIP can replace Labour and force Theresa May to deliver ‘real Brexit’ if it can end its civil war, the party’s new leader declared yesterday.
Paul Nuttall vowed to rebuild Ukip after a disastrous summer that culminated in an altercation between two of its MEPs which left one of them in hospital.
Following his election yesterday as Nigel Farage’s successor, Mr Nuttall vowed to exploit Jeremy Corbyn’s weakness on issues such as immigration and defence to target dozens of Labour seats in the North. He said he would transform Ukip into the ‘patriotic voice of working people’.
But he also served notice to the Government that Ukip will ‘ hold their feet to the fire’ to prevent ‘backsliding’ over Brexit.
He faces a major task in galvanising a party that has been riven by infighting and deserted by donors since the June referendum.
Mr Farage yesterday insisted he would not be a ‘back seat driver’. But one Ukip grandee said: ‘I fear the party will just implode now Farage has gone. In a sense, we have achieved what we set out to achieve – we are leaving the EU. Without that mission to keep people together I think it will just fall apart – we have seen it all summer.’
Research conducted for Labour MP Dan Jarvis yesterday suggested even a 6 per cent swing to Ukip could cost Labour more than 30 seats. Mr Nuttall said the party had ‘ceased to speak the language, or address the issues, of working people’.
Mr Jarvis said it was vital Labour takes a tougher stance on immigration, adding that ‘the Ukip fox is in the Labour henhouse’.
Mr Nuttall won a convincing victory yesterday, securing 62.6 per cent of the vote against rivals Suzanne Evans and John Rees-Evans. To his detractors, he is most notable for his striking resemblance to Eddie Hitler – the bald, bespectacled buffoon played by Adrian Edmondson in 90s TV series Bottom. When news broke yesterday that Mr Nuttall had triumphed, many took to Twitter to point out the likeness.
Yet to his admirers, led by Mr Farage, the serving MEP for the North West is the working-class boy made good who can pose a serious threat to Labour in its northern heartlands.
‘If there is to be a future for Ukip, then it must lie in the working men’s pubs of the North West, rather than the golf clubs of the South East,’ said one senior Ukip donor last night. ‘Nuttall ticks all the right boxes.’
In his victory speech, the new leader said of Labour: ‘ They have a leader who won’t sing the national anthem, a shadow chancellor who seems to admire the IRA more than the British Army, a shadow foreign secretary who sneers at the English flag, and a shadow home secretary who won’t discuss immigration.’
Mr Nuttall, who speaks with a distinct Scouse accent, was raised on a council estate in Bootle on Merseyside, by Labour-supporting parents.
His father Tommy is a self-employed electrician and his mother Rose works in the family business. He was studying at college when his family moved into their own privately-owned home for the first time – a terraced house, which his parents still live in today, now worth around £160,000.
An accomplished media performer – he is a regular on Question Time – Mr Nuttall is the party’s most powerful orator after Mr Farage, whom he regards as his mentor.
His views certainly mirror Mr Farage’s. He was against ID cards which he regards as ‘expensive, intrusive and unworkable’ and was a bitter opponent of gay marriage which provoked many Tories to quit their party.
Mr Nuttall, whose staunch Roman Catholic faith means he is also
‘Ticks all the right boxes’
against abortion, says: ‘Ukip has strongly opposed gay marriage, continues to oppose gay marriage and will always oppose gay marriage.’
He is also keen for another referendum – not on membership of the EU but on bringing in the death penalty for child killers.
A hard-liner on immigration, Mr Nuttall has appalled the liberal intelligentsia with his talk of ‘the hordes descending on these shores to take advantage of our overgenerous benefits system’.
As for climate change, he doesn’t believe in it. He opposes the construction of wind farms, and supports a ban on wearing burkas in public places. He is in favour of a separate English Parliament and flies the flag of St George at his office in Bootle.
The 39-year-old was born in the town and attended the Roman Catholic Savio High School. By his own admission he was more interested in football than academia and played in goal as a schoolboy for Tranmere Rovers.
A keen Liverpool supporter he was at the Leppings Lane End at Hillsborough during the April 1989 match when 96 fans were crushed to death.
He studied at a local college, before gaining a degree in History at Edge Hill University. He would later teach there as a lecturer.
Mr Nuttall started his political life as a Conservative – a rare species in Bootle – and was an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. In 2001 he stood for election as a councillor for the Tories in Liverpool but was heavily defeated.
He lost faith in the party when Iain Duncan Smith, an arch Eurosceptic, was toppled from the leadership in an internal coup in 2003. It wasn’t just that he thought ejecting Mr Duncan Smith was ‘fundamentally undemocratic’ – he thought the party was becoming a ‘bit wishy-washy’.
In 2004 he embraced Ukip and the following year stood for the party in Bootle at the General Election. It was a chastening experience. He secured a meagre 4.1 per cent of the vote.
He then went to work for Mr Farage in Brussels in 2007 and in 2009 was himself elected as an MEP for the North West.
In 2008 he married wife Linda, who worked in PR, but the relationship ended in divorce in 2011. While in Brussels, he met his future partner Louise Bours, 47, a fellow Ukip MEP, who is a former actress who appeared in the soap opera Brookside. They were both at Mr Farage’s party last week at The Ritz Hotel.
In a survey two years ago, Mr Nuttall was placed 736th out of 756 MEPs in terms of attendance at the European Parliament. But he was unrepentant, saying: ‘I have no interest in sitting all day in Brussels committees, enacting job-killing democracy-destroying legislation inspired by the EU.’
He considered running for the leadership not once but three times. Mr Farage and his allies thought Mr Nuttall had it in the bag in the September election – which saw Diane James win but then quit after only 18 days – but he pulled out at the 11th hour.
He was finally persuaded by Mr Farage to put his name forward this time around. Some of the conversations took place in a pub.
The election of a new leader is unlikely to put an end to photo-calls in local pubs. Like his mentor, Mr Nuttall’s favourite tipple is a pint of Guinness.
He says: ‘Nigel and I have been drinking buddies for many years. People have probably seen us pint in hand together, but I will cultivate my own image.’
SINCE the EU referendum, Ukip has at times less resembled a political party than a bar-room brawl. Riven by bitterness, factionalism and fisticuffs, it is short of money and losing donors fast.
It has also lost its one politician of stature, Nigel Farage, who almost singlehandedly turned it into an electoral force and without whom there would never have been a referendum at all. And of course, the party has lost its distinctive offering to voters – leaving the EU.
Just 15,370 votes were cast in the leadership election to replace Mr Farage’s successor, Diane James – who lasted just 18 days – with Paul Nuttall, a Merseyside-born former history lecturer.
The new leader’s task will not be easy. He faces a resurgent Tory party under Theresa May which is – rightly – determined to help voters of modest means who feel left behind and who might in the past have been tempted by Ukip.
Instead, Mr Nuttall intends to replace Labour, with its ‘dinner party politics’, and make Ukip the ‘patriotic voice of working people’. In this, he may fare better.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour long ago disappeared into la-la land. Over the weekend he was further securing the Left-wing student union activist vote by praising Fidel Castro as a ‘champion of social justice’.
His determination to keep unlimited immigration is more likely to have been noticed by Labour voters, who backed Brexit in droves to restore Britain’s borders.
At last year’s election, Ukip finished second in 44 Labour seats, including places such as Doncaster, Hartlepool and Rotherham which voted firmly to Leave. How will they vote next time, when offered a choice between Mr Nuttall and Comrade Corbyn?