Paul Nuttall stands down as Ukip leader after disastrous election result

Ukip’s leader, Paul Nuttall, resigned immediately after a disastrous election for his party, prompting speculation that Nigel Farage could return to the role yet again.

Ukip saw its share of the vote plummet to less than 2%, totalling just under 600,000 – a far cry from the near-4 million votes amassed in 2015.

Nuttall, who finished a distant third in the Boston and Skegness seat he had contested in Lincolnshire, gaining just 3,300 votes, said Ukip would remain “the guard dogs of Brexit”.

But he accepted it was a difficult moment for the party. “If I am remembered as the Ukip leader who kept the party on the pitch for the good times that lay ahead, that will be good enough for me,” he said.

“In politics, sometimes the tide goes in and sometimes the tide goes out. But for us, although the tide might be out at the moment, I am convinced we will return.”

Nuttall said he was resigning “with immediate effect” to allow a new leader to be chosen in time for the party’s autumn conference, when he said a “new, rebranded Ukip” would be launched. “I have to admit I never envisaged I would lead the party into three byelections and a general election in the space of six months. I wanted a year to rebrand and build the party’s structures.”

The new leader will be Ukip’s third in just a year. There was immediate speculation that Farage, still the party’s best-known figure, who opted not to stand in this election, could return.

Bill Etheridge, one of Ukip’s MEPs, who stood in the Dudley North constituency on Thursday, getting 2,144 votes, said it was time for Farage to take over the leadership again.

“I desperately want Nigel to return,” Etheridge said. “If he doesn’t, I shall consider standing myself to try to keep a Farage legacy alive in Ukip.” He stressed that this would be a last resort and that he wanted Farage to stand again.

Another senior Ukip figure, speaking anonymously, said he believed Farage would return. “He might feel he’s got no choice in the matter,” the source said. “He does like to see himself as Ukip’s knight in shining armour and has a habit of taking over when things are bad before moving on before it goes wrong again.”

Farage, who said he was “very sorry” to see Nuttall go, gave no clues as to his plans, but said Ukip would return. “If the result of this tonight is that we finish up without a government with a clear majority pushing for Brexit, then a huge gap opens in the political landscape for Ukip once again,” he said.

Ukip’s chairman, Paul Oakden, said the party’s national executive had appointed one of its members, Steve Crowther, to be interim leader, overseeing the leadership contest.

Oakden said he wanted to thank Nuttall “for having had the courage and strength of will to forge on over six difficult months for our party”.

He said: “Paul is a good, decent and humble man and I’ve no doubt that he will be remembered as the person who kept Ukip alive when everything seemed determined to bring it to an end. Once again, the overwhelming reaction of our membership this morning gives hope and confidence that our party will grow well into the future.”After the Brexit vote and the achievement of the party’s primary objective, Nuttall sought to reposition Ukip through what he styled an “integration agenda” critical of the Muslim community, including a call for a ban on the wearing of full-face veils in public.

This was coupled with a promise to boost the numbers of police and prison officers and to seek to tackle terrorism through measures Nuttall said could include the mass internment of terrorism suspects. But it did not break through to voters and caused some disquiet within Ukip.

The party’s general secretary, Jonathan Arnott, said he would also resign after the party’s disastrous performance. Arnott, an MEP for the north-east of England, said he was dismayed that Ukip “victimised and demonised” Muslims in its rebranded integration policy.

It is understood that Arnott, a former maths teacher, was offered the Hartlepool seat by the party’s national executive committee, despite local members choosing its 2015 candidate Phil Broughton. But Arnott is believed to have turned down the offer because he fundamentally disagreed with the party’s most divisive manifesto pledges.

In his resignation statement, Arnott said Nuttall had been “badly let down” by his most senior advisers and said the party would be doomed to failure unless it dropped what he described as its “anti-Islam messages”.

Arnott said: “The people pushing such an agenda need to reflect on the party’s future. They need to stop making it difficult – impossible, even – for many people to vote Ukip.

“Ukip is now in a last-chance saloon, but it is needed more than ever. This election result is the last wake-up call that they will ever get.”

Ukip is believed to have lost about £100,000 in deposits, failing to secure more than 5% of the vote in hundreds of seats.

Ukip slumped disastrously in all its target seats. In Clacton in Essex, the party’s Douglas Carswell won 19,642 votes in 2015 but Paul Oakley, the candidate who replaced Carswell after he quit the party, won just 3,347 on Thursday. The Conservative candidate, Giles Watling, won the seat easily.

In Thanet South, where Farage had considered standing, the Ukip candidate, Stuart Piper, won just 6% of the total vote.