Reform UK likes to boast that it is bringing fresh new faces into politics, so we’re excited to report the party has a brand new director for the north-west of England – one Paul Nuttall!
Readers with long memories might remember Nuttall as the second of the nine permanent leaders Ukip has had since in the nine years since Nigel Farage stepped down. Stewart Lee fans will know him as “Paul Nuttals of the Ukips”.
Nuttall is best remembered, if at all, for confusion over whether he had been present and “lost close personal friends” at the Hillsborough disaster, that he had a PhD and had played football for Tranmere Rovers. None of these claims turned out to be provable and Nuttall insisted that he had never made any of them personally.
He resigned the day after the 2017 general election, in which Ukip’s share of the vote dropped from 12.6% to 1.8% and the party lost its only MP. The last anyone heard of Nuttall, he was said to be completing his PhD, on the history of the Conservative Party in Liverpool at the turn of the 20th century.
Now he’s back! “We’re pleased to reveal that our next Branch Meeting on Thurs 30th Jan will feature Paul Nuttall as our keynote speaker – Reform UK North West Director, ex-North West MEP, and ex-leader of UKIP,” boasts the Facebook page of Reform’s Leigh and Atherton branch.
“In addition to Paul’s keynote speech, audience members will have the chance to take the mic to ask a question, raise an issue, or give a suggestion. We want to give you the chance to sound your voice before Labour fully take it away.”
Don’t all rush at once!
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch is once again the subject of derision for naming her favourite Beatles song as the children’s singalong Yellow Submarine (title track, lest we forget, of a cartoon film in which the Fab Four fought off the Blue Meanies). Yet this is not the biggest Beatle blunder involving a Tory leader.
Edward Heath – possibly unfamiliar with the band’s attire – was once mocked for calling them “the saviours of the corduroy industry”, yet the prize for hitting a wrong note goes to Badenoch’s hero Margaret Thatcher. In 1990 she was advised by spin doctors to recreate the Abbey Road album cover for a photo opportunity but insisted on walking the iconic zebra crossing in the opposite direction to the way the group appeared on the sleeve, going (unusually for her) from right to left.
