The new leader of Ukip has said mass immigration is harming British culture but refused to call for a cap on the number of people who are allowed to come to the UK.

Henry Bolton used his first leader’s speech at the party’s Torquay conference to claim that immigration was overwhelming public services and British culture was being “buried” by Islam.

Bolton, a former soldier and Thames Valley police officer, was elected leader of the rightwing party during its annual conference on Friday, beating an anti-Islam candidate into second place.

He said the present rate of immigration was unacceptable and called for an Australian-style points-based system for managing migration.



He told the conference: “Immigration is overwhelming our public services, which themselves are being slashed – 25% off the police, for example, in some cases nearly 50% off local government.

“Housing and communities are being overwhelmed. It is harming our own culture, traditions and way of life. We must demand that our own concerns about our own British culture are heard and that that feeds into our policy on immigration.”

Earlier, he watered down Ukip’s past promises to cap immigration.

In 2015 the party promised a temporary block on low-skilled and unskilled migration and a limit of 50,000 high-skilled immigrants a year, while in 2017 the party committed to zero net migration.

The prime minister, Theresa May, remains committed to a target of reducing net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

But Bolton said: “Anybody who says put a figure on it is actually being entirely unrealistic and trying to paint politicians like me into a corner that gives you a nice thing to hang a comment on, but you’re not going to get it from me because actually we need to be a lot more practical and operational about it.”

On Brexit, he told the conference a transition period as proposed by the Conservatives and Labour was unacceptable and said Britain must be prepared to leave the European Union immediately.

He claimed May’s recent Florence speech, in which she set out plans for a two-year transition and made a first offer towards a financial settlement, showed that “the UK does not want to leave the EU in anything but name”.



Earlier in the day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Bolton said he did not believe the UK government would reach a deal with Brussels on Brexit and should be prepared to end negotiations.



Bolton, a former Liberal Democrat who later worked for the UN in Kosovo and the EU, said it was an assumption to state that the UK was on its way out of the EU, given conflicting reports about the level of progress made in the negotiations with Brussels.



“I do not believe there will be a deal,” he said. “I actually do not credit some of the people in the European Union with any wish whatsoever to have a smooth deal.

“I do not believe we should be pushing this out and allowing the negotiations to be endless before we leave. It is absolutely crucial that this country is fully prepared to walk away because otherwise the European Union is just going to be negotiating forever on this and they would just string us along.”

Anne Marie Waters, who has called Islam “evil” and has links to the far right, finished second in the seven-candidate race with 2,755 votes to Bolton’s 3,874 votes.

Waters made her displeasure at the result clear. She tweeted:

Today:



Jihad - 1

Truth - 0 — Anne Marie Waters (@AMDWaters) September 29, 2017

Bolton distanced himself from his rival’s Islamophobic stance. Asked if he would ban burqas, garments worn by women in some Islamic traditions that include a full-face covering, he said he would not want to lobby for changes in legislation if they were not necessary.

Asked about Ukip’s relevance given the result of the EU referendum, Bolton said it was “a little bit of an assumption that we’re on our way out”.

“We thought we were on our way out, we’d be fully out in March 2019,” he said. “But we’re clearly not going to be. The prime minister has made that quite clear – that we’re leaving in name only.”

Bolton’s election was immediately welcomed by the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who had reportedly planned to start a new party if Waters won. Farage tweeted that Bolton was “a man of real substance”, while Arron Banks, the insurance millionaire who was Ukip’s biggest donor, said he was ready to engage with the party again.