The Labour mayor of Liverpool has called on Paul Nuttall to resign as MEP for North West England after the Ukip leader admitted claims that a number of “close personal friends” had died in the Hillsborough disaster were untrue.
Joe Anderson said Nuttall needed to stand down as a Euro-MP and “explain himself to the people of Liverpool” rather than seek a new political office by contesting next week’s Stoke-on-Trent byelection for Ukip.
Nuttall, who has been leader of his party for less than three months, initially denied making the claim when interviewed on a Liverpool radio station on Tuesday, then admitted the claim had appeared on his website and was not true, and then said that a Ukip press officer was to blame, as she had written it in his name and posted it on his website.
It later appeared that Nuttall had also made the false claim to the BBC, which reported in August 2011 that he had said that unless key documents relating to the disaster were made public, “we will never get to the bottom of that appalling tragedy when 96 Liverpool fans including close personal friends of mine lost their lives”.
Anderson said: “He’s got some explaining to do and people want answers. The people of Liverpool are upset and angry that someone like him is trying to exploit Hillsborough to portray himself in a good light. This city won’t tolerate it.”
Anderson accused Ukip of “putting up some sort of smokescreen” when it said that the press officer said to have been responsible for making the claims, Lynda Roughley, had offered to resign.
“It’s not the press officer who should be offering their resignation, it should be Paul Nuttall offering his resignation as a candidate, never mind for what party,” said Anderson. “This is getting now to a stage where it’s absolutely clear that someone is misleading the British public and this is from a political party that’s supposed to be a serious political party.
“The public deserve to know the truth. If it is true that there are comments, clearly attributable to him, saying that ‘close personal friends’ died at Hillsborough, his position is untenable.”
Nuttall has repeatedly said in recent years that he was present at the 1989 disaster. Last week the Guardian reported that a number of people who had known Nuttall for many years – including a former teacher, an old school friend and a political opponent – said they were surprised that he had never mentioned it. The teacher said his school believed it was aware of all the pupils who had been present, and that Nuttall was not among them.
While admitting on Tuesday that the claim he had lost close friends was false, Nuttall also said he was hurt and angered by suggestions that he was not a survivor of the disaster and claimed that he was the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by the Labour party.
Nuttall’s attempt on Wednesday to defuse the row appeared to have failed on Merseyside, where local leaders and Hillsborough survivors reacted with fury to comments by Arron Banks, the businessman who has been Ukip’s biggest donor, who said he was “sick to death of hearing about” the disaster and described it as an “awful accident”.
The Liverpool Echo reported that Nuttall had failed to distance himself from Banks’s comments and said it had received no response from Nuttall’s representatives.
Becky Shah, who was 17 years old when she lost her mother, Inger, in the disaster, said she was disgusted by the saga: “It’s just absolutely reprehensible and at the end of the day it’s not his secretary who needs to stand down.
“He said yesterday that he takes full personal responsibility for what is published on his website – well, if he takes full responsibility he should do that then and walk away from the leadership of Ukip. He needs to resign, he needs to go.”
More worryingly for Ukip, Nuttall’s problems appear to have given a boost to Labour in Stoke.
One non-Labour local campaigner said he believed Jeremy Corbyn’s party would do far better than expected in the constituency and that Nuttall’s Hillsborough remarks, as well as his inability to name the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent, were coming up repeatedly unprompted on the doorstep on Tuesday afternoon.
“They are going to smash it,” the source predicted. “It will be like Oldham,” he added, referring to last December’s Oldham and West Royton byelection, where Labour won 62% of the vote.
There is no sign that Nuttall’s popularity has been dented inside Ukip, however, and senior figures such as Douglas Carswell, the party’s MP, and Peter Whittle, a London assembly member, have rallied to Nuttall’s defence.
Campaigning for Nuttall in Stoke, Carswell said: “Paul is a first-class candidate and I think things are going really well and it’s incredibly exciting. Obviously when you’re fighting a byelection sometimes the tide is with you and sometimes the tide is against you, but I think this is a real opportunity to make sure it’s the Labour party that is beached on 23 February.”
Meanwhile, the Liverpool radio interviewer who coaxed out Nuttall’s admission about the claim said he was left disappointed by the Ukip leader and urged him to explain more about his Hillsborough role.
“I was disappointed that he plays the victim very quickly, saying he was offended and his family are upset. That’s what’s gone down very badly. It suddenly becomes a personal thing about him,” said David Easson, of Radio City News.
Easson said that Nuttall had asked to go on the show in an attempt to counter suggestions that he was not at Hillsborough.
