The leader of UKIP said his position will be ‘untenable’ if he loses his seat as an MEP in the European elections on Thursday.
Sophy Ridge presented UKIP leader, Gerard Batten this morning (Sunday, May 19) with YouGov European elections polls which showed that his party are on just 3 per cent of the votes.
Batten said: “If I lost my seat in London it would be untenable for me to continue as leader.
“But I won’t make a decision about what I am going to do until after the European elections because I am getting a lot of people in the party overwhelmingly saying to me, whatever the result is, they want me to continue. I will base my decision on the outcome of the European elections and how I feel afterwards.”
When Sophy asked Batten whether he questioned his ability to do his job, after losing 268 councillors, Batten shared what he believes have been his successes since becoming the leader of UKIP.
“I inherited a party that was about to implode and disappear,” said Batten.
“Since then we’ve built the party up, we’ve almost doubled the membership and we’ve got more donations coming in.”
The Brexiteer, who has seen his party struggle in the polls while former UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party soars ahead, said the only poll that counted was the one on Thursday.
Batten defended his decision to appoint former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson – who is now running as an independent in the election – as an adviser.
After UKIP candidate Carl Benjamin again made remarks about raping Labour MP, Jess Phillips, Batten continued to describe the remarks as a “joke”.
“It’s a bad taste joke which I wouldn’t have made,” said the UKIP leader.
“He’s got another existence as a comedian. I rang him up and made my views very plain to him. I don’t condone it.”
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