After the referendum, Farage resigned as UKIP leader. Diane James was elected as his successor, but resigned after 18 days.- </ref> Farage's former deputy, Paul Nuttall, was elected leader that month. In March 2017, the party's only MP, Carswell, left the party to sit as an independent. The next month, Reckless also left UKIP. In the 2017 local elections, UKIP lost all 145 seats it was defending, but gained one on Lancashire County Council. These results led several prominent former UKIP members to call for the party to be disbanded. In the following 2017 general election, UKIP received fewer than 600,000 votes and won no seats. The following day, Nuttall resigned and Steve Crowther took over as interim party leader. In July 2017, it lost its majority on Thanet council when Councillor Beverly Martin defected to the Conservatives; in September all three UKIP councillors on Plymouth council defected to the Conservatives, as did Alexandra Phillips, who had been UKIP's Head of Media for three years.