Jonathan Arnott

Jonathan William Arnott (born 12 January 1981) is a British politician and former schoolteacher.

Arnott joined UKIP in 2001, and stood in the 2004 and 2009 European elections, being the party's No.2 list candidate in the Yorkshire and the Humber region on both occasions.

In the general election of 2005 he stood as a UKIP candidate for the Sheffield Attercliffe constituency, coming fourth overall with 4.5% of the vote, losing his deposit.

Until 2008 he was the part-time local elections co-ordinator for the party, working with 300 candidates to increase the number of UKIP councillors.

At the 2008 UKIP conference, Arnott was unveiled as the new party General Secretary.

Arnott was then selected to contest the Sheffield South East constituency for the 2010 general election.

Just before the election, he took part in the second half of a Radio 5 Live debate on crime with Alan Johnson, Chris Grayling and Chris Huhne.

He spoke four times, calling for a reduction in police bureaucracy, abolition of jail sentence remission and rehabilitation of offenders.

Arnott came fifth with 4.6% of the vote, losing his deposit but increasing the UKIP vote by 0.2%.

In the 2011 local elections Arnott came second in the Woodhouse ward with 13.1% of the vote, behind the Labour party with 62.9%.

He then led UKIP in the 2012 local elections, the party coming fourth overall with 10.25% of votes, up from 1.6% in the comparable 2008 local elections.

Arnott himself finished second in Woodhouse ward with 22.1%, behind the Labour party with 60.2% of votes.

On 12 October 2012, Arnott was announced as the UKIP candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in South Yorkshire coming fourth with 11.54% of the vote.

After the 2014 European Parliament election, he served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North East England region.

Arnott resigned as General Secretary—after six years in the position—in August 2014.

On 25 May 2014, it was announced that Arnott had been elected as UKIP's first ever MEP for North East England.

Arnott used his acceptance speech on election night to highlight what he described as an election campaign that had been "marred by a campaign of hate, waged against UKIP by those who fear a realignment of British politics".

Following Arnott's election to the European Parliament, it was announced that he was to represent the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group on both the Committee on Budgets and the Budgetary Control Committee.

Arnott's maiden speech was in Strasbourg in a debate on youth unemployment, where he highlighted how the North East of England had the highest rate of youth unemployment in the UK, with at least one in four young people unemployed.

In the speech, he criticised Labour's support of the EU's flagship 'youth guarantee scheme' labelling it as a 'guaranteed failure'; highlighting previous criticisms from the International Labour Organisation.

Since his election Arnott has made more speeches in the European Parliament than any other British MEP.

In the 2015 general election, he was the UKIP representative in the BBC Daily Politics Education Debate and in the young people's Newsbeat debate on the economy and housing.

He stood for the Easington constituency–the constituency in which he lived–coming second in the safe Labour seat with 18.7% of the vote, ahead of both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative candidates.

After the 2015 general election, Arnott accused the party of peddling a "toxic message" and "banging on" about immigration which he said lead to "self-inflicted" disappointing results.

He also criticised the party's candidate selection process which allowed people with what he called "abhorrent" views to represent the party.

In July 2016, Arnott launched his bid to become leader of UKIP following the resignation of Nigel Farage.

He gained the support of Yorkshire and the Humber MEP's Jane Collins and Mike Hookem.

Arnott said he wanted to appeal to the millions of voters who did not support UKIP in the previous year's general election but backed Brexit in the EU referendum.

He withdrew from the contest in August, acknowledging he couldn't win and saying he refused to be controversial just to grab headlines.

Arnott was one of the most vocal internal critics of the infamous 'breaking point' poster that was unveiled in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum.

He described this as "dog-whistle politics".

He said it was "heartbreaking" that on the campaign trail he had to plead with people who perceived the poster as racist not to abandon their intention to vote Leave.

He believed this poster lost a lot of votes for the Leave campaign.

During the 2017 UKIP leadership election Arnott repeatedly warned that far-right entryists had signed up as members of UKIP in an attempt to take over the party by electing Anne Marie Waters as the next leader.

He said that UKIP would be on the verge of dying if this attempt was not thwarted and said that he "could not under any circumstances support Anne Marie Waters".

Originally sitting as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) representative, he resigned from the party on 19 January 2018 to sit as an independent until designating as Brexit Party on 17 April 2019.

Arnott was born in Sheffield.

At the age of 15 he enrolled at the University of Sheffield, graduating with a MMath in mathematics.

Arnott was Head of Mathematics at Handsworth Christian School.

He is known for his belief that those in politics should keep doing a real-world job, and therefore he continued to teach on a part-time basis until his election as an MEP.