UKIP ‘may not win a by-election for 20 years’ says party chairman after humiliating Stoke defeat

Paul Nuttall’s humiliating defeat in Stoke-on-Trent may spell a 23 year by-election victory drought for Ukip, according to the party’s chairman.

But Paul Oakden says that the party is fully behind its leader, despite his “disappointing” defeat.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Something clearly didn’t fire yesterday in as much as the fact that we didn’t win.

“Politics is a long game. It took us 23-odd years to win a referendum to get Britain out of the European Union.

“It may take that long for us to get a seat in Westminster via a by-election. But if that’s how long it takes then that’s what we will keep doing, because that’s what we are here for.”

MORE: Stunned stonemason discovers time capsule from the 19th century hidden in block of stone
MORE: Universities to offer ‘fast-track’ two-year degrees

Ukip’s MP tally currently stands at just one, and Stoke – which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit in last year’s EU referendum – had appeared promising territory for the party.

But in the event Mr Nuttall’s gamble in standing did not come off as Labour held the seat relatively comfortably with a 2,620 majority for Gareth Snell.

Mr Oakden acknowledged Mr Nuttall had endured a “difficult” campaign, in which he had to apologise over a false claim that he lost close friends in the Hillsborough disaster, but said he had the full support of the party.

“This party is absolutely behind Paul Nuttall as its leader. He is 12 weeks into his leadership. We are all going to support him moving forward. This is one step along a long road for our party.”

He added: “He has had a difficult campaign. There is no doubt that he has been targeted by various unpleasant elements during the last four weeks.

“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.”

Mr Oakden said that in the end they had lost out to Labour because they did not have the organisation on the ground.

“We weren’t able to get our campaign on the ground as effective as we would have wanted to yesterday. The Labour Party did,” he said.

“The Labour Party have an incredibly strong and efficient campaign machine. Ukip are relatively new on the political scene.”