Jonathan Arnott pulls out of UKIP leadership campaign

UKIP MEP Jonathan Arnott has announced today that he is standing down from the party’s leadership campaign.

Mr Arnott, Euro-MP for the North East, has decided to stand aside having concluded that he would only come second in the national ballot.

Mr Arnott said that his campaign has been about party unity and internal reform and “in a smaller field of candidates there would have been a massive chance for a uniting, positive, compromise candidate to win. But that is not the race that we are in.”

He said that his belief is that UKIP must become a grown-up political party which is capable of taking on the political establishment on their own grounds.

Mr Arnott, a former maths teacher who lives near Middlesbrough, concluded by saying that he wished the future party leader well but has yet to make up his mind which candidate to support.