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It is safe to say 2017 was a very bad year for UKIP’s Paul Nuttall - and in 2018 he appears to be keeping a much lower profile.

Last year the Bootle-born politician twice failed to become a Member of Parliament, led his party to a General Election decimation and eventually stood down as leader after just six months at the helm.

Scousers will certainly remember the false claims that he had ‘lost close personal friends’ on the day of the Hillsborough disaster, which were found on his website ahead of the Stoke by-election.

That revelation led to national headlines, along with an investigation into whether he had provided false address information on his nomination form for that vote - although no charges were ever brought.

He also face widespread mockery for more false claims including that he had played professionally for Tranmere Rovers and that he had achieved a PHD from Liverpool Hope University.

So all in all it was a very bad year - and as usual, Scousers were very unsympathetic in their mockery of a man many in the city feel does not share their political values.

But where has Paul Nuttall gone?

(Image: Jonathan Brady / PA Wire)

Here at ECHO towers we noticed that the once outspoken and media-hogging UKIP man has been very quiet recently and decided to try and track him down.

The first thing to mention is Mr Nuttall is still a Member of the European Parliament, representing the North West and will remain in office until 2019.

As such, he will mainly be found in either Brussels or Strasbourg,

Mr Nuttall hasn’t always had the best record of attending the European Parliament, but according to the votewatch.eu website, he did participate in some votes last week.

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UKIP don’t seem to know where he is...

(Image: Joe Giddens/PA Wire)

We thought the obvious place to start in our search for Paul Nuttall was to contact the party which he belongs to, which he was leader of until last summer.

As a journalist, the normal route to go down is to contact a political party’s press officer.

The problem is, UKIP doesn’t really have any anymore.

In February, the party’s longstanding communications director Gawain Towler stood down from his role - although he remains a part-time

consultant to UKIP.

We asked Mr Towler if he had any knowledge of what Paul Nuttall has been up to in recent months.

After stating that “he was in Strasbourg this week, I think” he then added: “Mostly, I don’t know.”

We had similar luck when contacting Paula Walters, who is chairman of the party’s Wirral branch and a member of UKIP’s National Executive Committee, who said she “didn’t have any information” about Mr Nuttall.

He is nowhere to be found online...

It would appear that Mr Nuttall has completely removed himself from the sphere of social media.

This could have something to do with the constant stream of jokes, memes and general mickey-taking aimed at him on sites like twitter and facebook.

In fact when searching for Paul Nuttall on twitter, the only account bearing his face is a parody account called Paul Nuttall History.

The biography for the site states: ‘On this day in history’ with me, accomplished history scholar and five-times winner of Sports Personality of the Year, Dr. Paul Nuttall PhD.’

And on facebook there appears to be no sign of the beleaguered former UKIP leader either.

Perhaps most interestingly, when trying to access his personal website at paulnuttallmep.com, we were met with a blank yellow screen and a ‘temporarily unavailable’ message.

Have you seen Paul Nuttall? Get in touch with us at news@liverpool.com or tweet us with the hashtag #JustseenPaulNuttall