Paul Nuttall should know that truth matters to those who still grieve for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster

If the Ukip leader respects the memories of those who died, perhaps he would distance himself from the comments of his party’s donor Arron Banks, who described the event as ‘an awful accident at a football ground, that’s it’

A defaced campaign poster for the parliamentary candidate in Stoke-on-Trent (Getty)

As if enduring nearly three decades of lies and cover-ups wasn’t enough, the families of the victims of Hillsborough now have in their midst a would-be MP who in my opinion is using the disaster for political gain.

Paul Nuttall’s admission that he did not actually lose “close personal friends” in the tragedy, despite these words being on his website for six years, comes after he signed nomination forms at an address in Stoke he’d apparently never been to, and following disputed claims that he played for Tranmere Rovers and has a PhD.

The truth is everything to those who still grieve for the 96 victims of Hillsborough. And after Brexit, when the country bet the farm on the cross-fingered hope that everything will be OK outside the European Union, trust has never mattered more in politics. If the Ukip leader cannot be relied upon to tell the truth about basic aspects of his personal life and background, how can we trust him to be an honest and reliable Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central?

Nuttall has admitted the claim about losing a close friend was wrong, but in his latest statement, he still insists he was at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989. He says that as a 12-year-old schoolboy he was in the upper tier of the Leppings Lane end – where he would have witnessed the disaster unfolding directly beneath him.

The Ukip leader says he finds it difficult to talk about the tragedy, which is understandable for someone who, at a young age, would have seen the unimaginable horror of fans being crushed. The Hillsborough Families Support Group, a local Catholic priest at his school who counselled all the pupils who had been in that part of the stadium, his old school friends and Liverpool politicians have all said they have never in nearly 30 years heard Nuttall talk about Hillsborough or been contacted by him about the disaster.

So the question remains, was Nuttall there on the day or not? If he was not, it would be especially cruel for a politician to casually appropriate the most painful of memories as his own, to falsely insert himself into the sacrosanctity of Leppings Lane where people lived and died. It would also be callous of him to allow his press officer Lynda Roughley to take the blame, as she did on Tuesday evening, for writing the quotes about him losing “close personal friends” on his website, even though they had been there since 2012, and even though a similar statement from 2011 remains on the same site. It is also odd that Nuttall, having claimed that he does not speak to The Sun because of Hillsborough, has in fact given quotes to the newspaper on several occasions, as recently as last month.

The row has led the Ukip donor, Arron Banks, to describe Hillsborough as “an awful accident at a football ground, that’s it” – despite an inquest jury ruling last year that the 96 were unlawfully killed. Banks also tweeted on Tuesday that “milking a tragedy forever is sick”.

This mindset is exactly the dismissive and belittling approach the families have had to cope with for years, the accusation that they are refusing to move on from an “accident”, that they are “milking” the tragedy and “wallowing in grief”, that their pursuit of justice is wrong. If Nuttall respects the memories of those who died, perhaps he would distance himself from the comments of his party’s donor, or even, as a Liverpool fan who claims to have been there that day, describe them as offensive?

Next week, the people of Stoke Central will vote for a new MP. They have a choice. Admittedly, the Labour candidate Gareth Snell has been found to have made offensive comments about women. This by-election has not been politics’ finest hour. But, like Hillsborough, politics should be about telling the truth. Can the Ukip leader live up to this?