A TORY council leader has left voters wondering if he still has his feet on the ground after insisting that alien life exists in a boggling 1,200-plus-word ramble.

In a lengthy Twitter thread, Derbyshire County Council leader Barry Lewis argued “there must be other life out there.”

He said governments might have “captured crashed craft and are reverse-engineering them with their defence contractor partners.”

Mr Lewis added: “There’s still some reticence by some press outlets and reporters and governments (or individuals within for fear of looking a bit ‘out there’).

“Short of a tracked interstellar craft landing on the White House lawn and little green men popping out of it for a chat, there will be those who won’t ever entertain the idea of [UFOs].”

The council recently announced cuts to care homes, learning disability centres, home support and community group funding, saying it needed to save £30m this year to balance the books.

Louise Jones, the Labour MP for North East Derbyshire, said: “My constituents deserve better than this rant about UFOs.

“They expect their council leader to tackle the things that really matter to this area. Aliens are not one of them.”