Desperation strikes as HnH proved a busted flush

The depths to which Hope not Hate have been forced to descend in order to keep their absurd and factually inaccurate campaign against UKIP alive could not be better demonstrated than by two of their recent postings.

The most recent was less than 30 minutes ago when they posted a link to an article entitled "Is UKIP a party of bigots?". Naturally, as it was posted by HnH, it is a rhetorical question because if they answer was 'no' they wouldn't have published the link at all. Again naturally, as the article in question was originally published in the New Statesman, the answer is 'yes', because they'd found a series of outlandish quotes from people who by their criteria were associated with UKIP.

Reduced to sharing 15 month old articles, Hope not Hate
demonstrates that it has passed it's sell-by date

Is this a story which is about to break into the national consciousness? Will it be front-page news tomorrow? Unlikely, as the article in question was originally published over a year ago back in February 2013, and was linked at the time by Hope not Hate.

Back in those days, it was being used to persuade unwilling HnH supporters that UKIP should be a target for HnH's efforts as the writing was already on the wall for the far right, and in the absence of a far right enemy, how would Hope not Hate justify their existence? By attempting to create one, of course. Nothing illustrates their failure better than recent polls showing UKIP set to overtake Labour and win the European elections on the 22nd May.

In the midst of this focus on UKIP, what is particularly remarkable is the silence with which HnH have greeted the spoiler party set up by former UKIP MEP Mike Nattrass and known as 'An Independence Party'. On it's list of candidates for the South West in position number 4 it features one Andrew Edwards, a man described by BNP leader Nick Griffin as 'a close ally' who worked inside UKIP until he was caught in 2003 and expelled. It is possible that this silence is because Edwards is also a long-standing source of information for Hope not Hate on internal factions within the BNP - as a Griffin loyalist he has proved a useful conduit for forwarding information on Griffin's rivals to Lowles' associate Carl Morphett.

Still, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' as they say, and hopes that the deliberate attempt to confuse voters on ballot sheets in 9 regions into accidentally not voting for UKIP means that Nattrass' vanity project will be left alone despite heavy representation from the far-right.

Touting for business when your campaign runs out of ideas is
a sure sign of desperation

The final sign of the current desperation to save the Labour vote at Hope not Hate is that they have been reduced to touting for anti-UKIP stories on the 'net. Running advertisements for people to contact them if they 'have a story about UKIP to share' reeks more than a little of a campaign which has run out of ammunition, something further demonstrated by their need to attack UKIP over a single vote on the trade in ivory (which is already illegal) in the European Parliament.

What does the future hold for Hope not Hate? Not much, apparently. Deputy Director Ruth Smeeth has been given another safe Labour seat to lose in the general election, while Nick Lowles will stumble on funded by donations from unions largely supplied by the working class who are set to vote UKIP in their droves. All they can hope is that the Labour Party feels the need to try the same lines of attack ahead of next year's general election and will once again call on their services to attack UKIP without Labour needing to address the political arguments publicly. As their efforts in this year's election appear to have failed catastrophically it appears an increasingly forlorn hope. So take heart, the end of Hope not Hate is in sight.