Paul Nuttall, the new Ukip leader, has announced his party will push for an immediate “quick and clean Brexit” without the need to trigger article 50, as he set out a new direction and team for the party after replacing Nigel Farage.

Nuttall, who was elected on Monday, said the new policy would be to call for instant repeal of the European Communities Act 1972, instead of Theresa May’s decision to wait until the end of March to begin two years of negotiations with the EU.

Nuttall has said he aims to replace Labour by becoming the party of patriotic working people, but the new EU policy suggests he also wants to apply pressure on May to pursue Brexit as swiftly as possible.

In a controversial move, he appointed Gerard Batten, one of the founding members of Ukip, to the post of his Brexit spokesman on Monday.

Batten, a Ukip MEP, has previously attracted controversy over his belief that British Muslims should sign a special code of conduct and warning that it was a big mistake for Europe to allow “an explosion of mosques across their land”.

Speaking on Monday, Batten, an expert on the technicalities of EU exit who has written papers on the subject, said he would use the role to describe how Britain could leave the European Union as quickly and cleanly as possible.

“I want Ukip to stop talking about Brexit and to start talking about exit. We don’t want a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit but a democratic and speedy exit. The result of the referendum must be respected and enacted without delay,” he said. “Theresa May and her Tory government cannot be trusted to deliver our withdrawal from the EU. She was a remainer who heads a predominantly remain government.

“If she were genuine about delivering Brexit she would have triggered article 50 the moment she became prime minister. Instead nothing has been done in the last five months, and there are no plans for the next four. Then we will face at least another two years of protracted negotiations. Under article 50 they could be extended for years to come.”

He accused May of trying to “delay and delay the whole process in order to fudge it and to try and foist on us a ‘Norwegian or Swiss’ type EU model whereby we continue to pay money to the EU, obey a large percentage of its laws, and have open borders”.

“Ukip’s policy will be to reject article 50. Rather, we will call for parliament to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 immediately as the first step in the process: this will restore lawmaking supremacy to the UK parliament and put the British government in the driving seat of negotiations, not the EU.”

As well as appointing Batten, Nuttall has made room in his top team for Suzanne Evans, restoring her previous roles as deputy chair and policy chief. She was stripped of the titles after clashing with Nuttall’s predecessor, Farage.

The party’s new fisheries spokesman will be Mike Hookem, who hit the headlines earlier this autumn over a reported fracas with former Ukip leadership candidate Steven Woolfe in the European parliament.

Nuttall’s election has caused alarm in some quarters of Labour over fears he may have more appeal to voters in the north of England than Farage, a former commodities trader from the south.

Frank Field, the Labour chair of the work and pensions committee, said Ukip posed an “accidental threat” after it stumbled on disgruntled Labour voters and picked up 1 million of them in 2015.

“Now Ukip has a leader whose whole aim is to win Labour voters. We now face a threat that we have never faced before. Labour beware,” he said.

It is understood Labour plans to fight Ukip under its new leader by attacking its record on wanting to privatise the NHS, amid warnings from MPs that his election poses an unprecedented threat to the party in the north of England.



Labour leadership sources said the strategy would be to relentlessly highlight Nuttall’s past praise for privatisation.

Immediately after Nuttall’s election, dozens of Labour MPs tweeted a video showing Nuttall criticising the “monolithic” NHS and suggesting it could not survive in its current form.

Farage also had form for previously calling for a health system involving private insurers, although Ukip has changed its policy since then and now claims to want to defend the current NHS.

The leadership is understood to be treating the threat of Ukip under Nuttall seriously but does not consider it to be an escalation of risk compared with the era of Farage.

While Labour will want to keep the attention on health, Ukip and the Conservatives are likely to try to move the conversation on to the topic of immigration, attacking Labour for not wanting to have extra controls.

But Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, has been clear that Labour must “hold the line” by defending immigration and not allowing the party to become “Ukip-lite”.

Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Tuesday that the threat of Ukip “must always be treated seriously” as he acknowledged the party had made a mistake in allowing “nationalist and populist voices” to dictate the immigration debate.

“I think we need to make it very clear that the difference between ourselves and Ukip is that Ukip and the hard right of the Tories are nationalists and isolationists,” he said.

“They treat other countries with contempt. Just look at the speeches that Nigel Farage gives in the European parliament, look at what Boris Johnson says to the Italian minister about prosecco.

“In the Labour party we are patriots. We stand for the values that make this country great, and we treat other countries with the respect that they deserve.

“They are the partners that we have to work to make the best possible job after Brexit. I think we need to set that clear vision out: we are the patriots, they are the isolationist nationalists.”