Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood - I agree with Nigel. On HnH's website!

In a 'guest blog' on Hope not Hate's website, Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood desperately tries to

PC leader Leanne Wood - a surprising convert to UKIP's
point of view!

save her party from electoral oblivion in Wales by making statements which would see her branded racist if she was a UKIP candidate. Normally we wouldn't link to HnH's website, but we feel the article to be so remarkable an admission of defeat that we will make an exception in this case - you can find it here. It's not every day that Nick Lowles blog contains a guest post which essentially says 'I agree with Nigel'.

Wood - who just a couple of months ago said of UKIP that "your politics have no place in our country, not now, not ever" - appears an unlikely convert to UKIP's point of view. In her Hope not Hate article, she argues:

"Not enough has been done to clamp down on gang-masters who exploit migrant workers by paying below the minimum wage and in doing so pricing out local – often low-skilled workers - from the labour market with devastating consequences for both parties...

A borderless trading bloc... was not meant to include narrowing the economic options of the people in its poorest regions to westward migration.

The principle of EU wealth redistribution... should and must result in enhanced living standards and prospects for all EU citizens in their home communities so that moving to another state is seen as an option rather than a necessity."

In other words, that UKIP are right - unlimited immigration does drive down wages, create wage compression, and reduced employment for British workers, while the EU's disastrous economic policies have made the UK the country of choice for people whose home nations have been devastated by the Euro.

Wood now belatedly supports all the things Hope not Hate have been denouncing as lies for the past year in their campaign against UKIP. Still, a consistent argument was never one of Hope not Hate's strong points as their 'head of intelligence', former BNP thug Matthew Collins trawls UKIP member's social media desperately seeking past links to, er, the BNP.

What is interesting is that this is published not just on Hope not Hate's website, but on HnH director Nick Lowles own blog. It is difficult to see this as anything other than an admission by Hope not Hate that UKIP are correct in their assessment of the problems facing the working class, and also a tacit admission that Hope not Hate's aim is not to fight racism, but to fight UKIP on behalf of what it defines as 'the left' - which includes Plaid Cymru and the watermelon Greens just as much as Labour.