The UK Independence Party has risen in tandem with the cult of Nigel Farage. With a year’s hiatus, he has been Ukip’s leader for almost a decade. But for how much longer? Farage has said that if Ed Miliband becomes prime minister – which bookmakers still predict will be the outcome of May’s general election – he will have “failed”. And even if that doesn’t happen, the aftermath of a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union would, Ukip insiders say, be a logical moment for Farage to stand down.
And so the question of who will replace him as leader arises. Indeed, it sounds as though the jostling has already begun. “Could I lead Ukip? Yeah, I think I could lead Ukip, and I think I could lead Ukip well,” says Paul Nuttall, the party’s deputy leader, when we meet over a few pints at a pub by St Pancras Station in London.
In many ways, Nuttall is Farage’s antithesis. He was educated at a comprehensive school and hails from a family of working-class Labour supporters in Bootle, near Liverpool. He is only 38 and has served the party as deputy leader since 2010.
“I wouldn’t be anyone else’s deputy, put it that way,” he says. Nuttall has “had the chance of leading Ukip twice before – I was too young and that’s one of the reasons why I backed away”. Now, he thinks he’s ready for the role. “In terms of front-line politics, I think there’s only Nigel who’s got more experience in Ukip than me.”
That experience includes being lampooned by the media. The comedian Stewart Lee mocked “Paul Nuttalls from the Ukips” and his assertion that intelligent Bulgarians should stay in Bulgaria to further economic prosperity at home. “I’ve never seen it,” Nuttall says. “I’d better watch it, actually. But my argument was absolutely sound.”
On a number of fronts, Nuttall does not want for contentious opinions. He supports reintroducing the death penalty for serial killers and those who murder children or police officers. Raised a Catholic, though not a churchgoer, Nuttall also favours limiting abortion to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. “I feel very uncomfortable when I look at the figures and see that a city the size of Nottingham is aborted every year,” he says.
Aside from being called out by Lee, Nuttall is best known as the architect of Ukip’s “northern strategy”.
“The one thing that I am very passionate about is getting more northern voices out there,” he says. “Ed Miliband has helped us a lot. People look at him in the north and think, ‘You’ve got absolutely nothing in common with me.’
“The Labour Party are definitely far too London-centric and the Conservative Party are, too. We should be the opposite of that – the party that represents the rest of the country, not just those within the M25.” While he welcomes the defections of two former Tory MPs, he says that there “would have to be a limit on the number of defections” to prove Ukip is “not a kind of Conservative Party in exile”.
It almost amounts to a pitch: advocating that Nuttall (and not the Charterhouse-educated former Conservative MP Douglas Carswell) should succeed Farage as leader. “It might be good for politics in this country to have someone who lives with real working people and understands their trials and tribulations.”
He insists that the next general election does not represent an endgame for Ukip. “This is a long-term political project that will change British politics for ever. Particularly in the north. I think 2020 will be the election when we make big, big gains,” he asserts. By then, Nuttall could be in a position to claim them.
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