Anti-EU UKIP picks new leader to replace Trump ally Farage

“I want to replace the Labour Party and make UKIP the patriotic voice of working people”, Nuttall said.

He added: “It’s not been the greatest few months for UKIP, yet it’s not really made much difference. Today’s result has ensured that it will”.

Mr. Nutall also will take advantage of the new USA connection Mr. Farage formed with President-Elect Trump, stating that “He struck gold”.

The UKIP MEP appeared on RT UK’s News Thing program over the weekend, where he highlighted his close relationship with Trump.

Nuttall said UKIP, which only has one of the 650 seats in parliament, needed to use the momentum behind the shock Brexit vote to oust the Labour Party, now led by left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn, in many of its traditional working-class strongholds across the north of the country.

The interim UKIP leader said it was “ridiculous” and “potentially against the national interest” for no one to have been in touch with him about using his close ties to the incoming White House administration.

The new leader of the party, who has taken over from Nigel Farage, had just begun speaking when he was cut off on both Sky News and the BBC.

He said he would serve out his term in the European Parliament until 2019. “And this week I’m going off to the USA, but purely as a tourist”.

He first joined UKIP in 2004 before he was later appointed an MEP in 2009.

He named Peter Whittle, a former candidate in the leadership race, as his deputy, Paul Oakden as a party chairman, and Patrick O’Flynn as chief political adviser.

Douglas Carswell, the party’s only MP, is an ally of Ms Evans.

Still, Nuttall will take over a party seen as part of the populist groundswell in the West led by the poll-defying victories of Brexit and Trump. It’s day zero, it’s a new beginning.

“The party has a duty to unite”, he said.

Nuttall now faces a fight to keep UKIP relevant in the aftermath of the European Union referendum and amid dire financial circumstances after the party received less in donations than the BNP in the last reported period.

Of the 32,757 ballot papers sent out, 15,405 were returned.

John Rees-Evans – an ex-soldier notorious for claiming a “gay donkey raped his horse” – came in third with 18.1 percent.

As a shaven-headed Liverpudlian with a strong regional accent, Mr Nuttall said he would stand out from the identikit politicians who he believes have turned ordinary working voters off politics.

“I wouldn’t personally cozy up to him, no”, he said.

Labour MPs across central Scotland – where the party’s vote used to be weighed rather than counted – once believed they had a job for life.

“It is clear that we can not trust Ukip and Paul Nuttall with the NHS”.