UKIP leader Nigel Farage has waded into the Bolton postal vote row by claiming “something is going wrong with the electoral system".

The borough’s different political parties have been embroiled in a bitter feud ahead of tomorrow’s Crompton by-election which began when Tory leader Cllr David Greenhalgh suggested a list of more than 300 names added to the postal vote late list had been done so using “coercion” or “undue pressure” from politicians.

Mr Farage — who was in Bolton to speak at a Say No to the EU event — has raised the issue of the potential corruption of the postal voting system before, most notably after Labour’s victory in last year’s Parliamentary Oldham by-election.

Speaking during his Bolton visit, he said: “What did I say after Oldham? I made a big issue of this and it was very interesting that in the following couple of days I was getting phone calls from MPs in Westminster, saying our party leaders are ignoring us and you are absolutely right.

“Once we sort this EU referendum out, the next big thing for me is going to be electoral reform in this country – voting is something that we used to think was sacred and it is now being demeaned and devalued horribly.

“One of the ballot boxes we saw in Oldham was 99 per cent Labour, so something really stinks here.”

He added: “While I can’t comment on the specifics of the case in Bolton, I think it is very interesting that it is not just UKIP saying something is going wrong here and something is going wrong.”

“I would doubt in most communities that the postal vote should be more than two per cent, let alone some of the ridiculous percentages we see in some of these wards.”

UKIP’s deputy leader, Paul Nuttall joined Mr Farage at the event and also had some strong words to say about the pitfalls of the postal process.

He said: “The Representation of the Peoples Act has allowed for postal voting on demand and has allowed a system whereby one particular party seems to make the most of it all the time and we saw it first hand in Oldham – it is the stuff of a banana republic, not a fully functioning western democracy.”

Labour has robustly denied Cllr Greenhalgh’s comments, describing them as “outrageous”.

To read the party’s full response to the postal vote row, see tomorrow's letters page.