Paul Nuttall resigns as UKIP suffers huge poll drop

Paul Nuttall has resigned as UKIP leader, saying the party has been "a victim of its own success".

UKIP had been hoping to capitalise on Brexit to make gains but failed to win a single seat as its vote share plunged by 10.8%.

Mr Nuttall, who came third in Boston and Skegness, said he had left the foundations for a new leader and insisted UKIP was "still on the pitch" and "more relevant than ever".

He said "a new era must begin with a new leader", adding the party would be the "guard dogs of Brexit".

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Mr Nuttall added: "It is clear that UKIP requires a new focus, new ideas and a new energy - and it is there amongst out ranks.

"I predict after last night that if things go the way I expect, UKIP could in 18 months' time be bigger in terms of poll rating and members than it ever has been before."

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage praised Mr Nuttall for an "excellent speech" and said he was "very sorry" about his departure.

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Earlier, Mr Farage said he did not blame Mr Nuttall for UKIP's poor performance and refused to be drawn on whether he would make a comeback as the party's leader.

Although Boston and Skegness yielded one of the biggest Leave votes in last year's EU referendum, Mr Nuttall finished a distant third behind the Conservatives and Labour.

Tory Matt Warman claimed the seat with 27,271 votes - a 19.8% vote share increase.

It was Mr Nuttall's sixth unsuccessful attempt to get into Parliament, having finished second behind Labour at the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election earlier this year.

Former UKIP chairman Steve Crowther has been appointed as the party's interim leader.

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Why did UKIP perform so badly?

Sky News correspondent Tom Rayner, who followed UKIP throughout its campaign, says there are four reasons why support for the party collapsed:

:: Relevance

UKIP has always claimed to be more than a single-issue party, but voters have made clear that is precisely what they are.

In the wake of the Brexit referendum, it seems the vast majority of nearly four million people who voted for UKIP in 2015 have decided it is now a party without purpose.

Calls for burka bans, slashing the foreign aid budget and zero percent net immigration fell on deaf ears.

Outgoing leader Mr Nuttall predicts the party is simply ahead of its time on these issues - but whether that's true will perhaps only be seen at the next election, and UKIP may well not be around to capitalise on it.

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:: Resources

UKIP stood aside in a number of seats in order to allow hardline Brexiteers from both Labour and the Conservatives an easier run, but that doesn't entirely account for fielding 246 fewer candidates compared to 2015.

The truth is the party has haemorrhaged money and membership in the last year. It went into this election, materially-speaking, a shell of what it was two years ago.

Mr Nuttall tried to spin this as an opportunity to focus on a few key seats rather than spread resources across the country - but if that's what they did, it didn't work.

In areas where the party had previously enjoyed support and put in some campaign effort - Thanet South, Boston and Skegness, Dagenham and Rainham, Clacton and Thurrock - they were left embarrassed.

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:: Labour

When the election was called, the key dynamic everyone was talking about was how many of those 3.8 million UKIP voters from 2015 would switch to the Tories.

Predictions were that anything from 50% to 70% could make the shift. What was not predicted was that Labour would hoover up a good proportion of those voters too.

This has disproved the theory that UKIP was a "gateway drug" - the route by which former Labour diehards could bring themselves to do the unconscionable and vote Conservative.

This is not only one of the key reasons Theresa May failed to win the majority she had hoped for, but very bad news for UKIP.

They were confident they could win back eurosceptic Tory voters in a year or two if they didn't like how she handled Brexit. But if those voters are spread between a governing and an opposition party, it seems unlikely former Ukippers will return en masse.

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:: Leadership

Paul Nuttall has quit the party leadership after less than a year in charge.

He had talked down both his own chances of winning a seat and the likely fortunes of his own party throughout the campaign. But even he cannot have imagined how bad the results would be.

Many will ask whether it could have been any different had Nigel Farage still been leader. Mr Nuttall has been fairly strong at communicating from behind podiums, but lacks the electricity of his predecessor out on the doorstep.

Charisma alone would not have saved UKIP's national vote share, but there's just a chance Mr Farage might have had a shot in Clacton or Thanet South if he'd have given it a high-profile push.

Although he has backed Mr Nuttall throughout, Mr Farage has kept his distance from the campaign.

Now the party embarks on yet another leadership election - the third in a year - with no obvious heir, no obvious voter base and with the party's ultimate existence in question.