The Mayor of Liverpool has called on Paul Nuttall to resign as UKIP leader after admitting past about the Hillsborough disaster were false.
Nuttall’s official website stated on several occasions that he had lost ‘close personal friends’ in the 1989 tragedy which killed 96 Liverpool supporters.
But the Bootle politician was forced to make a public climbdown on the claims during a radio interview.
His press officer Lynda Roughley claimed that she was responsible for the erroneous claims and offered her resignation, which was rejected.
Quotes were also attributed to Nuttall also appeared in a BBC article from 2011, which Mayor Joe Anderson cited in urging him to stand down from the party’s leadership.
“Are you going to blame these direct quotes on a press officer, @paulnuttallukip?”, he wrote on Twitter.
“Do the decent thing for a change and resign.”
Are you going to blame these direct quotes on a press officer, @paulnuttallukip? Do the decent thing for a change and resign. pic.twitter.com/PrW5OUUyHY
— Joe Anderson (@mayor_anderson) 15 February 2017
Arron Banks, one of UKIP’s major donors, accused Hillsborough campaigners of ‘milking a tragedy forever’ in the wake of Nuttall’s comments.