Ukip activists ridicule 'car crash' leader Paul Nuttall warning he is leading party to election defeat

'We often wonder, if he came up here, whether he would wear a white cap, a white scarf and have a whippet beside him'

Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has 'added to the chaos', said one activist (Nick Ansell/PA Wire)

Ukip activists have ridiculed their beleaguered leader Paul Nuttall, one saying he gives the impression he has “a whippet beside him”.

A second accused Mr Nuttall of overseeing a “car crash” when he stood as a by-election candidate earlier this year and called for him to quit after the election.

“He just comes across like an idiot,” said Maureen Vines, a former Ukip treasurer in Yorkshire. “We often wonder, if he came up here, whether he would wear a white cap, a white scarf and have a whippet beside him.”

And Allen Cowles, who is the Ukip candidate in Rotherham on June 8, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that Mr Nuttall should fall on his sword after the expected election defeat.

“Ukip will have to make a further change in my view,” Mr Cowles said. “I think we will have to have another leadership election.

“I think it’s very difficult to believe that someone can have the kind of car crash that happened in Stoke and then be expected to carry on.

“It needed somebody to come along, after the squabbling and the infighting and provide a safe pair of hands and steady as you go. Unfortunately, he only added to the chaos.”

The evidence of knives out for Mr Nuttall comes after what was widely viewed as his disastrous bid to become an MP in Stoke-on-Trent, in February.

Most damagingly, he was forced to admit that claims on his website that he lost “close friends” at the Hillsborough football disaster were untrue.

The website also originally claimed that he played football professionally for Tranmere Rovers, when in fact he only ever played for the youth side as an amateur.

And his LinkedIn page claimed, until last year, that he had been awarded a doctorate in history. It later emerged that he had started the course but subsequently dropped out.

Meanwhile, Ukip was left in the grim position of having no MPs, when Douglas Carswell quit in March, and with little prospect of gaining any in the looming election – after plunging to as low as three per cent in the polls.

But, responding to the claims, Mr Nuttall said: “I don't agree with that. Don't forget, I mean I was elected as leader of Ukip only six months ago and I was elected with the biggest mandate the party has ever given anyone.”

And he insisted his party is “more important than it has ever been”, as it became the first the first to begin campaigning in the wake of the Manchester bombing.

Asked whether Ukip was now merely a pressure group, Mr Nuttall said: “The referendum was great. We won the war and now we have got to win the peace.

“Theresa May is going to go into these negotiations. I think she will begin to barter things away, I think fisheries will go, I think there will be a deal over freedom of movement of people, I think we will end up paying some sort of divorce bill.

“That isn't what people voted for on June 23 and that's why Ukip needs to stay on the pitch to be the guard dogs of Brexit.”