Murnaghan Interview with Paul Nuttall, UKIP, Deputy Leader 12.04.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, is the steam beginning to run out a little bit of the UKIP train?  A poll by Opinion in the Observer this morning has given the party an 11% share, its lowest rating for almost two years.  Well I’m joined now from Heywood in Greater Manchester by the Deputy Leader of UKIP, he’s Paul Nuttall, a very good morning to you Mr Nuttall.  What do you make of this?  I’ll just put this straight to you, is the steam coming out of the engine?  

PAUL NUTTALL: I don't think it is.  I think if you look at the opinion polls across the board, for example there was an opinion poll on Friday by TNS which has us on 19%, another on 16, another on 15.  The opinion poll which I think really matters is the one that you guys show on Sky on a regular basis which is the Poll of Polls, which is the average and we’re still polling around 15% and I must say to you Dermot, if I was offered that we would be polling 15% 25 days before a general election, the day after the European elections last year, I would have bitten your hand off but equally this is a first past the post election and what really matters here is how we are polling in our target seats, not generally across the country.

DM: Okay but Mr Nuttall it is always the trend isn’t it and a little bit downwards, are you altering your ambitions then in terms of the number of seats you hope to take?

PAUL NUTTALL: Well actually I think we are polling better now than we were in the last week of March so since the short campaign has kicked in the UKIP poll rating has I think slightly steadily increased.  We are not downsizing our targets, we believe we are doing well in the constituencies where we are putting in resources and my job within the party hasn’t been sitting in an office in London, it’s been going out around the country speaking to branches, knocking on doors and I’ll tell you, in these target seats people are coming over to UKIP and we are quite confident we are going to get a fair few people elected to the House of Commons on May 7th.

DM: But is it also ambition for the future?  Are you hoping to plant flags on the way to the summit, finish second in a lot of seats for another go later on?

PAUL NUTTALL: Yes, I mean I’m not going to deny that.  I’ve been advocating something within the party called UKIP’s 2020 vision now for a number of years and I believe up here in the north of England for example we may take a couple of seats, indeed there may be a couple of wildcards where I may be sitting on a show on Sky on election night and go oh my God, I can’t believe we’ve just won something like Southport but equally what we’re trying to do is ensure that we finish in second place in around a hundred seats here in the north of England and then go on and do well in next year’s local election and build towards 2020 because we believe if we get second places, if we make ourselves the opposition here, it puts us in the money seat for the next general election.  

DM: But it’s the oft-quoted charge isn’t it from the Conservatives that if UKIP does achieve that and particularly in many of those northern Labour seats, you will have been depriving the Conservatives perhaps of a chance of winning that seat and putting Ed Miliband in Downing Street.

PAUL NUTTALL: But do you know what, the Conservatives from what I’ve found are pretty much dead from Birmingham upwards, particularly somewhere like here in Heywood and Middleton.  If people go out and vote Conservative in a seat like this they are going to end up with a Labour MP, there’s only one challenger here.  Look, we’ve been growing up here in the North of England for a number of years now, in by-election after by-election we’re proving ourselves to be the only opposition to Labour, whether that’s in Barnsley, Rotherham, Heywood and Middleton which we lost by just 617 votes back in October, in Wythenshawe, we’re finishing second everywhere and in fact we’re proving ourselves to be the opposition and we’ve got the Labour party on the run.

DM: Now your manifesto is coming out later this week, obviously you are not going to tell us fully what’s in it but just give us a clue, can you tell us anything above and beyond what we don’t already know about UKIP, anything eye-catching?

PAUL NUTTALL: Well look, you know, my own National Executive would literally pull my arms off I suspect if I give you any sort of idea what is going to be in the manifesto on Wednesday.  The one thing we will say is of course we will be the party that will reduce immigration significantly, we will be the party that will advocate withdrawal from the European Union, we’ll be the party that wants to slash the foreign aid budget by 80% to ensure that we save £10 billion which can be reinvested in our NHS, we are the party that will say that the NHS must remain free at the point of delivery and indeed funded solely by taxation and of course the party in terms of the economy has proven where it will make £25 billion of savings which can be reinvested into vital areas in our country.

DM: All right, well that’s what we already know, we’ll look for something else in that manifesto Mr Nuttall.  Last question about the leader, Nigel Farage.  Now he’s said that if he doesn’t get in to Westminster he’ll stand down as leader, is that something then that you would contest?

PAUL NUTTALL: Oh-oh-oh!  Look, I don’t think it’s going to be an issue, I’ll tell you why, I think Nigel Farage is going to win Thanet South.  If the polls are saying okay he may be one point behind, that was an Opinion poll last week which was leaked to the Sunday newspaper but if you put the name of the candidate next to the party in Thanet South it shows that UKIP has a big leap in support and I am thoroughly confident that Nigel will go on and win that seat in Thanet South and therefore it will not be an issue and he will lead us into the second half of this decade, into the local election, into the Assembly elections, into the next European elections nice and soon and we hope into the next general election as well.  

DM: But when he does go, when the ball comes loose from the scrum to borrow Boris Johnson’s phrase, would you be tempted to try to pick it up?

PAUL NUTTALL: Well do you know, it depends on when it is, how far in the future.  I’ve been Nigel’s deputy now for five years, I was the Chairman of the party two years before that and I’ve made it perfectly clear …

DM: Well there we go, Paul Nuttall there, just coming to the end of that interview … oh we can just get the last words from Mr Nuttall, you made it perfectly clear what?  

PAUL NUTTALL: That I don’t envisage that this election will happen because I’m sure Nigel Farage will go on and win that seat in Thanet South.  

DM: Just as well you got to finish that sentence there, I might have finished it a different way, Mr Nuttall thank you very much indeed, very good to talk with you.  Paul Nuttall, deputy leader of UKIP there.