UKIP have slammed allegations of ‘foul play’ after last night’s full council meeting, which saw Conservative Councillor Ojetola lose the vote for deputy Mayor to Labour’s Cathy Kent.

Twitter has been rife since last night with allegations that the UKIP group and Labour did a surprise ‘u-turn’ on who would be nominated for Deputy Mayor.

UKIP group leader Graham Snell has claimed the three groups met on May 21 to discuss the mayoral and leader nominations and that UKIP made it clear they would not support the Conservative group’s nomination of Councillor Tunde Ojetola.

Mr Snell said: “I made it perfectly clear right from the start that UKIP would not support Cllr Ojetola as the candidate for deputy Mayor, due largely to his many anti-UKIP comments in the press both last year and this.

“On 21st May, I had a meeting with both John Kent and Rob Gledhill where we discussed such matters as committee positions and the Deputy Mayor.

“Again, I made it clear that we would not support Cllr Ojetola. No decision was made during that meeting as to who the Tory candidate would be.”

He added that Councillor Ojetola’s nomination was a surprise on the night, saying: “I was not made aware of who the Tories were putting up until approximately 17.45 last night and was bemused to discover that Cllr Ojetola was the candidate.”