Paul Nuttall: Ukip's future 'very bright' despite hammering in local elections

Ukip's future is "very bright indeed", its leader Paul Nuttall has insisted despite the party losing all but one council seat contested this week. 

In his first interview since the bruising local election results, Mr Nuttall conceded that many Ukip voters had switched over to the Tories. 

However he insisted that the party would surge in support once again when Theresa May "buckles" during Brexit talks by not stopping the free movement of immigrants. 

He said he anticipated voters would return to the Ukip fold when they feel "they have been let down" and when they "feel they aren't getting the Brexit they wanted".

Meanwhile Tim Farron claimed Labour was finished as a viable opposition to a Conservative Party heading for a landslide majority larger than those enjoyed by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s,.

The Liberal Democrat leader was speaking as he unveiled a flagship plan to put a penny on income tax to fund a £6 billion-a-year cash injection into the NHS and social care services.

Jeremy Corbyn admitted Labour faces a task on a historic scale if it is to regain power in the General Election after shedding 320 councillors and losing control of seven authorities, including Glasgow, on a calamitous day for his party.

Claiming that the gap separating Labour from the Conservatives is "not as great as the pundits are saying", Mr Corbyn told supporters in Leicester that the General Election represented "a great opportunity ... to create a society in which people are no longer held back by a system that is rigged for the rich. A chance to rebuild Britain for the many, not the few".

With the Conservatives gaining more than 500 councillors - as well as winning tightly fought mayoral races in the West Midlands and Tees Valley - Theresa May insisted she was taking "nothing for granted".

But Mr Farron said that his party was now the only opposition capable of preventing the "catastrophe" of a colossal Tory majority at Westminster.

"The local elections proved that the Labour Party is finished and the Conservative Party is heading for a landslide," he told Sky News.

"There is only one opposition party left standing after Thursday - not just standing but growing - and that's the Liberal Democrats."

The divisions in the Labour ranks were underlined when former shadow home secretary Andy Burnham - the party's newly-elected metro mayor for Manchester - failed to show up for a visit to the city by Mr Corbyn to celebrate his triumph.

Reports suggested that Mr Burnham may not have been told of the visit in time to attend, while the party's candidate for Manchester Central Lucy Powell said: "I didn't get invited and it's my constituency."

Mrs May had called the snap election purely in order to get it under way before Brexit negotiations began in earnest, said Mr Nuttall.

"It is very easy for her to talk the talk and act tough, but when she's asked to walk the walk, I think there's going to be problems," he told the BBC.

"I think she will start to barter things away. I think fisheries will go, I think there will be some sort of movement on immigration and freedom of movement, I think she might buckle on that. And I think she will certainly buckle on the divorce bill.

"When people are angry, when people feel they have been let down, when people feel they aren't getting the Brexit they wanted and they voted for on June 23, where are they going to go?

"They are going to return to Ukip. The future of Ukip is very bright indeed."

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