BENTILEE, STOKE-ON-TRENT – The false claim on Paul Nuttall’s website that he lost “close personal friends” in the Hillsborough disaster isn't just embarrassing. It could be the factor that ends his chances of winning the Stoke-on-Trent Central by-election.

“I was going to vote for that Nuttall,” said Fred Easterfield, a Stoke resident. He voted for UKIP at the 2015 general election but now intends to stay at home for next Thursday's vote.

“He was lying about the Hillsborough disaster – he said he’d got friends there but he hadn’t. I was absolutely disgusted. For anyone to say anything like that turns me right off them. You can’t trust any of them, to be honest. “

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell whether a political news story has actually cut through to the general public or whether it’s merely of interest to a small group of political obsessives. One official in UKIP's city centre campaign office optimistically described the Hillsborough story and Nuttall's subsequent apology as “something that only people on Twitter” got excited about.

But judging by the reaction from many voters on Stoke's enormous Bentilee housing estate, a hillside UKIP heartland three miles from the constituency's main shopping centre, it seems it could instead become an event that defines Nuttall's public persona.

Even worse for the new UKIP leader, it was clear that something much more damaging was happening: People who voted for the party at the 2015 general election said they were now withdrawing their support over what they perceived to be a question of trust.

“He’s been caught out lying, so we changed our mind," said Pamela Morris, standing outside the local frozen food shop. "He’s supposed to be someone who we’re supposed to trust. He’s been caught out lying and you can’t trust someone who’s caught out lying.”



Her husband, Terence Morris, agreed and said he’d pulled his vote from the party, which he’d backed for several years: “It was UKIP until he’s been lying on the television.”

The couple, who voted Leave in the referendum, complained that not enough had been done "about the asylum-seekers" in the area, said they now felt let down by UKIP, and explained they would now be voting Conservative.

Labour, which is fighting to retain the seat in a by-election prompted by the resignation of Tristram Hunt, has been attempting to portray Nuttall as a charlatan. One campaign newspaper issued by Labour consists of four pages of attacks on Nuttall, with no mention of the party's own candidate, criticising him for being an out-of-town fraud.