Attempting to gain political favour by repeatedly lying about the Hillsborough disaster has exposed Paul Nuttall and his party, argues Dina Cottier
The people of Merseyside have an identity. We are quick-witted, tolerant, warm-hearted and absolutely resilient. Come to Merseyside and you will strike up a conversation with a complete stranger, if you do not have the right change for the bus, someone will help you out. The kind heartedness and generosity of Merseysiders is something that is envied in other parts of the country.
The wounds that the Hillsborough tragedy left on Merseyside still seem so raw, even after 28 years, but we have proved that the press and the establishment messed with the wrong city, and our resilience and our fight against injustice has become a part of our Merseyside identity.
After the Hillsborough tragedy in April 1989, the families of the victims, survivors and communities across Merseyside came together to fight against the absolute lies and injustice that they faced for 27 years.
The people of Merseyside have successfully banished a newspaper from going anywhere near the city – or its outskirts. Our two wonderful football clubs have recently joined in on the boycott, in solidarity against the lies and smears that Liverpool fans endured because of the Sun. The finger was pointed at the fans, and it took 27 years for the finger to be rightfully pointed elsewhere.
Anne Williams lost her son Kevin on that day, and since his death fought tooth and nail to get the justice he deserved, and sadly died three years before the truth came out. But she never gave up. Even if it looked like the truth would never come out, people like Anne and Margaret Aspinall to name only two, tirelessly fought for the truth to come out for almost three decades. Wonderful modern day heroes like Williams and Aspinall did not campaign tirelessly so that someone could lie about losing a friend that day to gain political favour.
Tabloids fabricated disgusting stories to make the people of Merseyside look like criminal hooligans, so not only did survivors have to deal with tremendous mental health issues, they also had to deal with the police and the press covering up the truth and the blame that was put upon them.
It is one thing to tell little white lies about having a PhD, to tell tales of how you played football professionally, but for a so-called scouser to lie about the Hillsborough disaster, is completely immoral and it will not wash.
Hang your head in shame, Paul Nuttall, and good luck to your excuse of a party with gaining favour with anyone in Merseyside ever again.
The United Kingdom Independence party are no longer a fringe party. They now pose a serious threat to Labour heartlands in the north of England. God forbid, if Nuttall wins next Thursday, the people of Stoke-on-Trent Central will have elected a pathological liar with no remorse, with no identity of where he comes from. There may be a very real chance that Nuttall could become a fully-fledged member of parliament, and that his lies will be excused and forgotten about, but we will not forget.
Gaining political favour by playing on one of the biggest tragedies in Britain’s peacetime history will not wash. Merseyside can see right through you and your party, Nuttall, and it is only a matter of time before the rest of the country can too.
The thing is Paul, you are not just messing with the people of Merseyside, you are messing with the truth – and you are messing with justice.
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Dina Cottier is a member of Progress. She tweets at @dinacottier
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Paul Nuttall might want to hold on to that house in Stoke after all. They take Hillsborough very seriously on Merseyside. Would it now be safe for him to go back? I am not joking.
Consider quite how bad Gareth Snell is. And then consider that even he is going to beat Paul Nuttall. It would also be worth doing a little feature on the seven people who have so far won the parliamentary elections that Nigel Farage has failed to win. Where is he now, anyway? He was supposed to become one or more of a Peer, a Minister and an Ambassador. But instead, he is a shock joke on a radio station that dare not schedule his programme against George Galloway’s.
I do understand why George decided not to contest Stoke Central; I know slightly more about that than is in the public domain. Still, though, it would have been sublime to see him, of all people, deliver the killer blow to UKIP, which will for all practical purposes cease to exist in the early hours of next Friday morning. If, however, that blow has to be delivered by Snell, then, regrettable though that is, that is how it is going to have to be.
“Working-class communities”? “Heating or eating”? A war on VAT? In the voice of Len McCluskey, Nuttall impersonates the rhetoric, and even the specific policy agenda, of Dennis Skinner and Ronnie Campbell, of Angela Rayner and Richard Burgon.
Unlike Theresa May, Nuttall did not join the Conservative Party of Ted Heath. Like me, he was not born until after Heath had ceased to be Leader. It never ceases to amaze me that Nuttall is only 10 months older than I am, which makes him younger than the Beckhams, younger than Ant and Dec. Such, though, is in fact the case. He joined the Conservative Party that imposed VAT on domestic fuel and power, after it had done all manner of other things to working-class communities. Yet listen to him today. The progress of Britain towards sinistrisme is almost complete.
Leave won the EU referendum in, from its own point of view, all the wrong places. The places that voted Leave essentially demanded their mines, steelworks and factories back, complete with the unions and everything. The places that benefited from Thatcherism voted Remain so heavily that the Lib Dems are on course to take dozens of seats from the Conservatives in 2020, leading to a hung Parliament. The specific policy commitment that swung the referendum was the promise of an extra £350 million per week for the National Health Service.
The Conservatives did not even have an election in order to install a Leader who wanted workers’ representatives on boards, control of pay disparities within companies, and much else besides. Labour has massively re-elected the massively elected Jeremy Corbyn, whose very presence shifts the debate in directions that had previously been unimaginable. The Lib Dems have their most left-wing Leader ever, who is especially far to the left of the last one.
And now this, from the Leader of UKIP. Yes, UKIP. Led by Corbyn, however, Labour is still going to beat even him at Stoke Central. Think on.