Ukip eye wild card seats in the north

Ukip could take seats from Labour in the north of England, deputy leader Paul Nuttall has said.

Mr Nuttall denied the party was running out of steam in the run-up to the election, saying: “If I was offered that we would be polling 15 per cent 25 days before the general election the day after the European elections last year, I would have bitten your hand off.

“But equally, this is a first-past-the-post election. What really matters here is how we’re polling in our targets, not generally across the country.”

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He added: “The Conservatives from what I’ve found are pretty much dead from Birmingham.

“There’s only one challenger here, and look, we’ve been growing up here in the north of England for a number of years now.”

He said he believed Ukip “may take a couple of seats” in the north, adding “there may indeed be a couple of wild cards”.

“Equally, what we are trying to do is we are trying to ensure that we finish second place in around 100 seats here in the north of England and then go on and do well in next year’s local election and build towards 2020, because we believe if we get second places, if we make ourselves the opposition here, it puts us in the money seat for the next General Election.”

Mr Nuttall said he was “thoroughly confident” that Ukip leader Nigel Farage would win in South Thanet.