Farage ally says he is unhappy with some of new leader Paul Nuttall’s appointments

Arron Banks, the Ukip donor who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s successful Brexit campaign, has hinted he may not back the party under its new leader, Paul Nuttall, as it pivots north from its southern supporter base in a bid to oust Labour MPs.

The Bristol insurance tycoon and close ally of Farage has told the Guardian he is unhappy with some of Nuttall’s appointments, including his promotion of Suzanne Evans to co-deputy chairman and health spokeswoman.

Nuttall quickly appointed a group of northern allies to key positions following his leadership election victory last month, declaring that he wants to “replace the Labour party and make Ukip the patriotic party of working people”.

“I haven’t decided what to do re Ukip,” said Banks when asked if he would back Nuttall. “I’m certainly not thrilled that the people that caused so much trouble have been promoted.”

Banks has also suggested he may have other plans for spending his fortune. Earlier this month he said he wanted to pit a list of independent candidates against “bad MPs” and “career politicians” – most likely including Tory MPs who oppose Brexit – in a mission to “drain the swamp” at Westminster.

Leading elections analyst John Curtice has cast doubt on Nuttall’s prospects of winning seats in parliament. The professor of politics at University of Strathclyde said that where Ukip had previously come second, the average lead by the winning party was over 30 points.

He also said there were more seats where Ukip was currently second to the Conservatives than second to Labour. “People forget that maybe three-quarters of Labour voters voted to remain in the EU,” Curtice said. “If Ukip are going to survive they will have to move beyond Europe to become more of a broad socially conservative party.”

Ukip will on Thursday face the first test of its post-Brexit popularity in the byelection for the Tory-held seat of Sleaford in Lincolnshire. Ukip was only 1.6 percentage points behind second-placed Labour at the 2015 general election.

Ukip leader Paul Nuttall under fire over PhD claim and NHS Read more

Party insiders are expecting Nuttall to shift the party’s focus to the north-west. The leader is expected to be based in Merseyside, where he grew up, rather than in London and the party’s key operations, including national executive meetings, could take place in Manchester.

Nuttall’s appointments included Mike Hookem MEP, the Hull-based fisheries spokesman, who was involved in an altercation with Steven Woolfe in Strasbourg in October. Banks had been backing Woolfe for the leadership.

Meanwhile, Nuttall has tried to brush off a controversy about the truthfulness of his CV on the LinkedIn website which suggested he had a PhD. It states: “Liverpool Hope University PhD, history.” But he never completed his doctorate, his mentor at the university has told the Guardian.

“After two years ... he requested an interruption of studies,” said Dr Michael Holmes, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations who mentored Nuttall. “His political career took off. He never came back to finish it.”

Nuttall said of the LinkedIn page: “We don’t know who that is. It’s not linked to my email addresses. I have never once said I have got a PhD otherwise I’d be running around calling myself doctor. We have contacted LinkedIn and asked them to take it down.”

He has also faced intense scrutiny of his policy record. He has previously argued “the very existence of the NHS stifles competition”, that the burqa should be banned, abortion should be illegal after 10 weeks of pregnancy, and the death penalty should be reinstated for child murderers. He has also argued that bed and breakfast owners who discriminate against gay people should be free to do so and that Sky Sports was wrong to sack football pundit Andy Gray when he chanted “get your tits out for the lads” while working on a broadcast with a female referee’s assistant because it was harmless “banter”.



On Sunday he said: “Ukip will be committed to keeping the NHS in public hands.”

Nuttall’s focus on the north is reflected in his selection in key roles of the Mancunian John Bickley – who came a distant second to Labour in the Oldham byelection last December – as immigration spokesman and fellow Liverpudlian Ray Finch, who was appointed housing spokesman.

“If we target sensibly and drill down in local communities and use council chambers as the gateway to Westminster then everything is up for grabs,” Nuttall told the Guardian.

“Labour has deserted the working-class vote,” said Finch. “Poor people have been voting Labour and they are still poor. Since Kinnock the Labour party has been for the metropolitan, Guardian-reading elite.”

He accused Labour of ignoring housing, schools and “a huge growth in insecurity in working-class lives”.

“Take Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornberry applauding Fidel Castro,” Finch said. “Do you think anyone on an estate in Blyth [Northhumberland] gives a monkeys about someone who is essentially a mass murderer? They should be talking about schools and housing.”

Ukip is targeting seats in the West Midlands and south Wales but Labour voters in Yorkshire and Lancashire towns on either side of the Pennines are in its sights.

“We will definitely see a shift north in personnel and logistics and where the party is run from,” said a senior Ukip source. “There will be a significant bias towards the north for various aspects of Ukip.”

Nuttall, who stood for the Conservatives in a failed bid to become a councillor in Sefton in 2002, has been a Ukip MEP for north-west England since 2009. European parliament records reveal his participation in votes was the lowest of any of the 21 Ukip MEPs at 57.38%.



He is a regular contributor to Brietbart, the website until recently run by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s senior strategy adviser. Nuttall has written for its British arm 32 times, from August 2014 to May this year.

His desire to target Labour in the north has been in gestation for at least a decade. In 2007 he wrote a highly influential article entitled: How and why Ukip can attract the Old Labour vote.

He said that unlike the socially liberal middle class who had backed New Labour, these voters were largely unconcerned by environmental and human rights issues, took a hard line on crime and punishment, and were opposed to the EU because “they don’t like foreigners telling them what to do”.

Nuttall saw that many were deeply concerned by immigration, which they believed threatened jobs, wages and, very often, their sense of Englishness. If Ukip could convince these people it was genuinely committed to “cutting immigration drastically”, the party would reap considerable electoral rewards, he argued.

“The Labour MPs today follow the same route as the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats,” he said. “They go to private school, they go to Oxbridge, they get a job in an MP’s office and they become an MP. None of them know what it’s like in a working men’s club.”

By winning the support of the northern working class, Ukip could “create an earthquake” that would change British politics forever, Nuttall said. But it could do this only by ceasing to be a party that appealed only to disaffected Tory voters in the south. Now he has the chance to test his long held belief.