Ukip’s Paul Nuttall confuses election seat with town 100 miles away Paul Nuttall insists he will put the Eurosceptic Lincolnshire town of Boston “on the map” if he becomes its MP […]

Paul Nuttall insists he will put the Eurosceptic Lincolnshire town of Boston “on the map” if he becomes its MP – after confusing it with another town more than 100 miles away.

Just a day after the Ukip leader announced he was standing in the Tory-held constituency of Boston and Skegness, he twice failed to identify photographs of the seat on a TV politics show.

The Merseyside-born politician was told by Sky News’s Sophy Ridge that he might need to “brush up on a little homework” after he mistook Boston for Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

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He only correctly identified whether the picture was of Boston three out of five times on the Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.

I’m a national political figure, a national party leader. When I stand up in the House of Commons to represent the seat of Boston and Skegness, people will listen. Paul Nuttall, Ukip leader

But Mr Nuttall said: “People often say you have to be from the constituency and all the rest. But this isn’t a council election. It’s a parliamentary election.

”The vast majority of MPs do not come from the constituency they represent. This is about putting this area on the map.

“I’m a national political figure, a national party leader. When I stand up in the House of Commons to represent the seat of Boston and Skegness, people will listen.”

Mr Nuttall, who revealed he was standing in Boston and Skegness while travelling to Hartlepool 160 miles away on Saturday, insisted on the programme he had been to Skegness “several times” and the local Ukip branch was “very keen” for him to stand.

He denied that it was “game over” for Ukip if he failed to win in Boston, which at 75.6 per cent returned the highest vote in support of leaving the EU in last year’s Brexit referendum.

Mr Nuttall, who was defeated by Labour in the Stoke Central by-election despite dubbing the city the “Britain’s Brexit capital” earlier this year, said: “Regardless of what happens, Ukip has a great future.

Brexit election

He said: ”This is a specific Brexit election. The Prime Minister has called the election because she said she needs a mandate for Brexit and what we want to ensure is we get the kind of Brexit we want and what the British people voted for, which is real control of our borders, control of our own finances and bringing democracy back to this country.“

Mr Nuttall also defended the party’s ”integration agenda“, saying medical checks should take place on girls returning from countries where female genital mutilation was ”common place“. He accused other parties of ”turning a blind eye“ on the issue.

He added: ”We’ve had issues surrounding the rape gangs in certain areas of the country and I would suggest they should be classed as hate crime because they are targeted on specific people – obviously white girls are targeted by these gangs.

“If you just look at the amount of rapes taking place across the country by a specific section of the community, and perpetrated generally against a certain kind of girls, I think we have a problem that needs to be tackled.”

Ukip’s future ‘will be bright’

Asked if it was a sign of weakness that the party was “not bothering” to stand in some constituencies, he said it would stand in “hundreds” of seats, but there were seats where Ukip was prepared to “stand aside for real Brexiteers.

”Not fly-by-night Brexiteers,“ he said, ”but people who have campaigned for Brexit all their lives“.

Mr Nuttall acknowledged that Ukip needed restructuring and rebranding for a ”post-Brexit world“.

He added: ”Regardless of what happens, Ukip has a great future. I genuinely believe that the Prime Minister won’t get the deal that the British people want. I think she will begin to backslide and that’s why its dangerous if we end up with a huge Tory majority.

“I think we will get MPs elected to the House of Commons and Ukip’s future is going to be bright. I promise you we will go up massively in the polls in years to come and our membership will rise significantly.”