A FORMER Ukip leader has been appointed vice-chairman of Reform UK.
Paul Nuttall, who led the pro-Brexit party for only six months from 2016 to 2017, managed to acquire a reputation for making false claims during his beleaguered leadership.
His website and LinkedIn page were found to carry several inaccuracies about the failed politician’s past.
Nuttall claimed to have been a professional footballer, served on the board of a charity and that he obtained a PHD in history. These claims were found to be false.
And now, Nuttall is understood to be focusing on election campaigns and expanding Reform UK as part of his new role.
A Reform source told The Telegraph his role would not be “front facing” and he would be doing “purely internal stuff”.
The party denied Nuttall would be running a “six-week summer offensive” starting in July, insisting that leader Nigel Farage would be in charge of this.
Nuttall, 48, was elected as a Ukip Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 2009, becoming deputy leader a year later.
He did not stand in the leadership election after Farage resigned following Brexit in 2016, but was elected to head the party after Diane James resigned.
Nuttall failed six times to be elected to the House of Commons, and resigned as party leader in 2017 after he failed to win Boston and Skegness at the general election that year.
Ukip saw their votes plummet across the country to just 593,852 from 3,881,099 in 2015.
He then left Ukip in 2018, before joining the Brexit Party in 2019, set up by Farage after he left Ukip. Now he has followed Farage to Reform UK.
We previously told how Nuttall was criticised by families of Hillsborough victims after being caught lying about the disaster that claimed the lives of 96 people in 1989.
His website claimed he had lost “close personal friends” during the tragedy, but later admitted it was not true, blaming whoever wrote the words on his website.
