Paul Nuttall, British politician
Paul Andrew Nuttall (born 30 November 1976) is a British politician who served as Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2016 to 2017. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, and served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England between 2009 and 2019, sitting in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group. He left UKIP in December 2018, criticising the party's association with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and joined The Brexit Party in 2019.
Nuttall was a Conservative Party candidate in a council election in Sefton before joining UKIP in 2004. He became deputy leader of UKIP in November 2010 and the party's spokesperson for education, life skills and training in July 2014. He was elected party leader in the November 2016 leadership election. Nuttall stood unsuccessfully for UKIP six times in parliamentary elections between 2005 and 2017, of which his best result was finishing second in the 2017 Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election. He resigned as party leader after coming third in Boston and Skegness in the 2017 general election, with his party losing most of its electoral support.
A prominent eurosceptic, Nuttall has also called for the establishment of an English parliament. He favours a ban on wearing burqas in public places, has shown support for the reintroduction of the death penalty, and opposed Labour's 2015 plans to include LGBT-inclusive sex and relationship education in schools.