'Fact Checking' service launched by Organisation which falsified Electoral Accounts

Would you trust a ‘Fact Checking’ service run by an organisation which falsified its accounts?

Hope not Hate chief Nick Lowles announced yesterday that they are starting a ‘fact-checking’ service called 'Dispel' to "challenge, probe and analyse the growing threat, and lies, posed by and from the radical and populist right". Perhaps they should begin with a less grandiose ambition and start by looking at the accounts they presented to the Electoral Commission following the European Election in 2014.

Under electoral law, as a registered third party Hope not Hate were permitted to spend a total of £195,759 across the UK. They declared a total spend of only £129,894.04[i], and yet somehow this included an 8-page wrap on 761,000 copies of the Daily Mirror.

Their invoices which are filed with the Electoral Commission show they paid only £ 54,434 for this - £ 30,434 for printing[ii] and £24,000 for distribution[iii]. And yet the Daily Mirror’s rate card for advertising shows that the normal price for a 4 page wrap is £ 220,000 plus VAT[iv] (£264,000 total), which equates to £68,241 more than their total permitted electoral spend just for that single item or £209,566 more than the declared cost.

Under the terms of Schedule 11 Section 2(a), (c) & (e) of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000[v] the £209,566.00 should be regarded as a gift or donation (goods or services provided below market rate) and should have been registered with the Electoral Commission at the £ 264,000 figure.

According to UK VAT legislation, VAT on donations is still liable at their standard market rate. By the Daily Mirror issuing invoices for only £54,434 including £ 4,000 of VAT, they helped Hope not Hate evade a VAT liability in the order of £34,000 - VAT on £220,000 is a further £ 44,000, although the printing is VAT free.

That is bad, but it is not all. Hope not Hate also ‘forgot’ to include their monthly consultancy fees paid to US campaigners Blue State Digital in January and February which amounted to a further £8761.74 + VAT, or a total of £10,514.09 (as per their invoice for May[vi]). When these figures are added to Hope not Hate’s declared expenditure of £129,894.04, they give a total expenditure of £ 349,974.14 for an under-declaration of £220,080.10 contrary to Section 94 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000[vii].

This figure also raises another point. Controlled expenditure over £250,000.00 requires a report prepared by an auditor in respect of expenditure reports submitted under Section 96 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. This has not been done, and the submission of unaudited accounts for sums exceeding £250,000.00 is contrary to Section 97 of the same Act[viii].

To prevent this getting too long, we will return another day to various other offences contained within their accounts. Failure to Appoint Auditors, Exceeding Spending Limits for Registered Third Parties, VAT Evasion and False Accounting will do for today.

The only question which remains to be asked is “would you trust a fact-checking service run by  people who are guilty of these criminal offences?”

---

[i] http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Search/Spending?currentPage=1&rows=10&query=hope%20not%20hate&sort=DateIncurred&order=desc&tab=1&et=tp&evt=europeanparliament&ev=410&optCols=CampaigningName&optCols=ExpenseCategoryName&optCols=FullAddress&optCols=AmountInEngland&optCols=AmountInScotland&optCols=AmountInWales&optCols=AmountInNorthernIreland&optCols=DateOfClaimForPayment&optCols=DatePaid

[ii] http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Spending/Invoices/2368

[iii] http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Spending/Invoices/2383

[iv] http://www.trinitymirrorsolutions.co.uk/specs-and-rates/creative-execution-trading-rates/wrap

[v] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/schedule/11

[vi] http://search.electoralcommission.org.uk/Api/Spending/Invoices/2378

[vii] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/section/94

[viii] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/section/97

Hope not Hate under reports Euro campaign expenditure by £22k on consultants alone

Hope not Hate Ltd director Lowles -
another incorrect return to the
Electoral Commission

We discussed at the beginning of this year about how one way or another Hope not Hate escaped paying £70,000 in VAT after consultants Blue State Digital failed to include the government's slice on their invoices, thus illegally reducing their bills by the then VAT rate of 17.5%.

It now seems that once again Hope not Hate are playing games with BSD invoices on their electoral returns. This year, the company itself appears to escape the taint of scandal which always surrounds Nick Lowles' electoral declarations of expenditure as the interesting bit is the lack of BSD invoices submitted as a part of HnH's overall expenses. Included in this batch are just two, totalling some £14,000. At least this time they contain the appropriate amount of VAT. Blue State Digital, as explained in our earlier article, also provide consultancy services to the Labour Party and several trade unions, and many of the senior management have close links to Labour. In their own publicity material, they boast about how they act only on behalf of 'progressive' causes. Belonging to Euro-fanatic Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP group, BSD sprang from Howard Dean's failed presidential bid in the US, and specialise in running online campaigns.



Blue State Digital - at least they remembered to add VAT

For the European elections, the 'regulated period' of expenditure set by the Electoral Commission ran from January to May this year, and yet HnH have submitted BSD invoices for only March and April. Both of these feature 'Strategic Consulting - European Parliament Elections Retainer' for £ 5166.66 per month, plus VAT. One features monthly technology licensing fees at £900/month, while the other doesn't - did they stop using the technology for campaigning? Did BSD decide they could have it for nothing? - in which case, where is the donation report relating to it? And what happened in January, February, and May? BSD are retained consultants of Hope not Hate, and have historically charged around £6,000/month for their services in addition to the technology fees. HnH's website and e-mail tools are maintained by BSD, and nobody could deny that their website formed a major part of their campaign against UKIP, so why did Lowles fail to declare this expenditure to the Electoral Commission? By our reckoning, Hope not Hate should have included Blue State Digital costs of £36,399.95 in their return rather than the £13,479,98 they actually declared, an under-reporting of £22,919.97.

HnH Witch-in-Chief Ruth Smeeth,
charged with magicking up the
entire campaign with no donations

We're not certain why Hope not Hate submitted such a laughably low return to the Electoral Commission. Despite boasting the 'largest ever' campaign against UKIP including 2.5m leaflets and an 8 page, full colour wrap around on the Daily Mirror, they claim to have spent just over £129,000 during the entire controlled period while receiving no donations whatsoever. If you remove the true cost of their consultants - £36k - then they claim to have run this campaign for just £93,000!! Remove 5/12th of Lowles reported £60k salary - £25k - and the rest of the campaign cost £68,000. Witchcraft, particularly given that they claim to have received no donations in excess of £500 during the controlled period. In the 2010 general election, they claimed expenditure of over £319,000 and a full list of donations from Unions and others for a much smaller campaign.

What we can't quite work out is what the point is of all this. The largest trade unions still admit to funding Hope not Hate - UNISON boast of the 'joint campaign' on their website - so what is the point of pretending that they don't have big money behind them unless it is a trial run ahead of the introduction of the 'Lobbying Act' (the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill) to see what they can reasonably expect to get away with in terms of concealing expenditure and donations from disclosure. We're at a loss as to what the alternatives are, unless they are attempting to play down their 'big money' links as they continue to try and raise un-needed donations from private individuals, but even that would be connected to the Lobbying Act: this was the reason for their 'become a supporter for a quid' campaign.

We're well aware that the Electoral Commission has a history of bullying the smallest boy in the playground, as previous focus on UKIP has proved: most recently, Nigel Farage was fined £200 for failing to specifically declare his constituency office even though it appears on his European Parliamentary declaration, while the Liberal Democrats have still not been forced to return the £2.5m of stolen money they received from a jailed, non-resident donor. Will they act on this? Several people have indicated a willingness to submit complaints and we expect them to be with the Electoral Commission within the week, but we suspect that vested interests within the big unions and the Labour Party will prevent much happening.

Hope not Hate apparently supported by witchcraft as electoral return shows no donations at all in first 5 months of 2014

Ruth Smeeth, Labour PPC and
witch-in-chief for Hope not Hate's
campaign donations

Hope not Hate Ltd's owner and director Nick Lowles was today praised by transparency campaigners for funding his organisation's 2014 anti-UKIP European elections campaign entirely by witchcraft.

The revelation of the supernatural source of Hope not Hate's funds came after their donation report for the period January to May 2014 showed that the organisation had received no reportable donations whatsoever to fund the campaign. This was despite the organisation running a number of high profile fundraising campaigns during this period. Electoral legislation requires that all donations in excess of £500 be reported to the Electoral Commission, although there is currently no reporting regime for magical acts, witchcraft or the work of wizards, a loophole through which Hope not Hate appear to have slipped.



Lowles spoke about cash, without realising his organisation would instead rely
upon witchcraft, which does not need reporting to the Electoral Commission

Campaigners for open democracy further praised the organisation for not having received any reportable donations since  trade union UNISON handed over £70,000 on the 12th March 2010, after which date the chequebooks of the trades unions apparently remained closed despite UNISON continuing to advertise the ongoing funding of Hope not Hate on their own website. The success of raising magical, non-reportable donations was attributed to HnH charity president and witch-in-chief Ruth Smeeth, although earlier statements by Lowles suggested he was prepared to resort to more traditional means of financing the organisation. In fact, in his 'Campaign Plan' for the European elections, he spoke of how the Euro campaign would be his organisation's 'most ambitious to date' and appeared to rely upon cold, hard cash rather than the magical powers his organisation was forced to fall back on, as can be seen from the attached commentary from their website. Lowles has subsequently denied that there is anything about Ms Smeeth which is 'like a wizard's pocket or a wizard's sleeve'.

No mention was made of the plan to replace donations with magic in the period just after the

The largest campaign to date, and yet not a single person or organisation
donated over the reporting limit. Magic!

elections either, during which Hope not Hate spectacularly failed to halt the advance of UKIP having apparently lost the Paul Daniels touch. In fact, on the 26th May, Lowles was proclaiming the HnH campaign to be 'it's largest... to date' despite having no reportable funding at all. This was particularly strange, as on the 21st May, Lowles was blogging about the 8 page insert in the Daily Mirror which was made possible 'by donations from over 650 of our supporters'. Nowhere in any of these reports or blog posts was the use of magic mentioned by Lowles.




Lowles himself said that 650 supporters had donated
to make this possible. A wave of the magic wand though
and 'poof!', the donors are gone! A single page
ad in the Mirror costs £45,000 according to their rate card

The magical touch does not finish there, however. We shall look at their campaign expenditure in detail in a later blog posting, but the total expenditure for their campaign in 2014 - which featured 2.5 million leaflets, an 8 page full colour supplement in the Daily Mirror, and all sorts of events around the country - was all achieved for a truly magical £129,000 of declared expenditure! Whatever you might say about Nick Lowles and his crew, they certainly know how to shop around to get the best bargains! Did they order it all on Black Friday last year?

Of course, there are some who might suggest that their donation - and their expenditure - reports owe more to Hans Christian Andersen than they do to witchcraft. This is a subject to which we will return over coming days.

We did ask the Electoral Commission for comment, but according to a spokesman their entire staff was busy combing Nigel Farage's expanse claims for offices declared on his register of member's interests to the European Parliament, but not specifically declared to them. "We can fine him £200 for this outrageous circumvention of the rules", they said, continuing, "In future, he should rely on witchcraft".

What are Hope not Hate hiding as Electoral Commission registration lapses?

Smeeth - allowed HnH
registration to lapse

Casual browsing on the Electoral Commission's website while looking at Hope not Hate Ltd's expenditure for this year's European Elections lead to the surprising discovery that the organisation's registration with the Commission has lapsed.

Due for renewal on the 6th November, the failure to register by HnH general secretary Ruth Smeeth - a Labour parliamentary candidate in Stoke on Trent - is doubly surprising as we are currently in a period where expenditure is regulated by the Electoral Commission ahead of next year's General Election, something Ms Smeeth can hardly be unaware of. The controlled period ran from the 23rd May this year according to guidance on the ElComm website which is made available to all parties and third parties, including serial electoral failure Ms Smeeth. Although Smeeth's name is listed as the 'responsible person', it can hardly have happened without Hope not Hate Ltd owner Nick Lowles knowledge, as any correspondence relating to renewal would have been sent to HnH head office.

At height of HnH campaign barely 70% of website visitors
were located in the UK, and 20% were in Belgium

All of which rather begs the question 'what are Hope not Hate hiding?'. With their recent campaign to encourage otherwise non-eligible donors to become 'Hope not Hate Supporters' by donating via online payment processors being a couple of months old, there is the possibility that they hope to escape the reporting requirements by some legalistic dodge. The failure to re-register also coincides with their innumerate 'we are the 85% campaign', launched shortly after UKIP's Rochester & Strood by election victory and designed to 'represent' the 57% of people (!) who didn't vote UKIP.

Are there any other reasons? We are interested by the big business ties of some of their donors, but we'll go into the detail of their expenditure at a later date. Be aware though that anything HnH does now in relation to the forthcoming general election is outside of the law and potentially illegal as they are no longer registered as a third party participant for the General Election.

Hope not Hate Ltd's lapsed registration with the Electoral Commission, making their anti-UKIP efforts since the 6th November illegal under current electoral law.

Lowles desperate plea to cover up electoral fraud

After Nick Lowles self-congratulatory - not to mention revisionist and distorted - missive about how effective Hope not Hate has been over the last ten years, he follows it up with the following message:

One of the consequences of the Lobbying Act is that the Electoral Commission will only accept that HOPE not hate has a supporter network if it can prove a financial transaction, otherwise any email, telephone call or meeting we hold will have to go down as an election expense.
As a consequence, we are asking people who back our campaign to officially become a HOPE not hate supporter for just £1.
All the money raised will go directly to our 2015 campaign fund.
If you like what we do, think we make a difference and want to help us going forward, then please become a HOPE not hate supporter for just £1.

What this is in reality is a massive attempt to hoodwink the Electoral Commission into believing that they are a grassroots organisation when they are not: the message is little more than an admission that they are perpetrating an electoral fraud, and they are now asking for members of the public to become an accessory to that fraud to save Nick's bacon.

We'd be interested in seeing any e-mails that readers might come across from the Labour Party, trade unions or any other organisation encouraging their members to cough up a quid to help Hope not Hate pretend they have mass support outside their own offices. As we have discussed previously, only 17% of their funds came from the general public at the last election, with a massive 83% coming from trades unions and political charities such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

It must be terrible to have to try and account for the cost of every e-mail, telephone call and meeting they have. It may be worth sending him an e-mail or giving them a call to commiserate. Its such a shame they'd have to account for them. Apart from giving Nick and his friends a call, it may be worth passing on to likely supporters details of how he was so happy that UKIP didn't gain one particular seat in Bradford, that he tweeted his support for the narrow victor, a former BNP councillor who remains a close friend of Nick Griffin. We're pretty sure this is not the sort of thing their supporters would sanctions.

There is of course no 'boots on the ground' Hope not Hate network of activists. As we saw repeatedly in the run up to the European Elections with the failure of repeated Hope not Hate leafleting campaigns - Transport Tuesday, various 'days of action' - there were no stand-alone HnH events. All relied on Labour and Green Party members, who took the opportunity to deliver leaflets their own parties would never have sanctioned because even for them the lies were too extravagant.

UPDATE - please see our latest post - their £1 donation system is deliberately soliciting donations from donors who are impermissible under UK electoral law. We know, because we've already made a series of donations from impermissible donors! http://nopenothope.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/lowles-attempt-to-evade-lobbying-act.html

A big thank you to Hope not Hate

A vote of thanks is due to Hope not Hate today, who are delivering 50,000 of their anti-UKIP leaflets each in Liverpool and Manchester.

Of course, they are paying for their distribution, because they have been unable to find enough of their own 'activists' to help, largely because today is giro day, the one day a week they get out of bed early to be sure of getting to the Post Office ahead of the crowd.

Hope not Hate director Nick Lowles was boasting yesterday of the lengths to which his organisation

HnH's 1m newspapers - might as well load them
straight into a skip.

is going to oppose UKIP, having long ago given up any pretence that they were fighting racism. In his blog post yesterday, he talks of the 1,000,000 anti-UKIP newspapers being delivered, and mentions the 300,000 anti-UKIP leaflets they already have.

So why is a vote of thanks due? We discussed in an article last year how areas which Hope not Hate had leafleted heavily with anti-BNP literature actually saw the largest percentage rises in the BNP vote, and in the North West they materially contributed to preventing UKIP taking a second seat. BNP leader Nick Griffin owes them a large debt for his five years on the gravy train.

This year, as we have seen the anti-UKIP hysteria reach a fever pitch amongst Hope not Hate's allies, we have seen a corresponding rise in UKIPs performance in opinion polls ahead of the 22nd May vote. Yesterday saw UKIP with clear blue water in two polls with 38% in one and 37% in the other, well ahead of Labour in second place on 27% in both and with the Conservatives a distant third below 20%. The Liberal Democrats - the party of 'in' - were heading for electoral oblivion. In at least two regions, UKIP was recording over 50% of the vote.

All of this is before Hope not Hate begin delivering the bulk of their literature. And before the launch of the cross-party 'Migration Matters' campaign headed by former Labour immigration minister Barbara Roache, the woman responsible for opening the door to Eastern Europe.

Over the past 3 weeks, we have had a number of interesting conversations reported to us which I am sure are mirrored by what many readers have heard themselves.

The first was with a hard-left wing friend, who said "I'm concerned about immigration just the same as you are, but of course I'm not racist because I'm left-wing. I shall be voting UKIP because I'm sick of it".

The other was reported by a friend of mine who was at a function last week talking with two former schoolfriends he had not seen for many years. One is a senior lawyer with a commercial bank, and the other an accountant with an investment bank - exactly the sort of people the media insist will not vote UKIP. The general consensus was that the establishment was 'shitting itself', 'picking on the smallest boy in the playground' and 'confirming to the public that they would do or say anything to hold on to power'. Both declared an intention to vote UKIP, although neither were regular voters, and neither held any particularly strong political beliefs.

What is interesting is how the stronger the attacks against UKIP by the establishment, the stronger UKIP support becomes. In an article on the 'Media Intelligence Partners' website, Alastair Thompson writes:

“Did we not learn from ‘bigotgate’ in 2010”, she (Jacqui Smith -Ed) said “…that there are many potential and actual Labour voters who feel all the frustrations and insecurities expressed by the Ukip poster campaign? Telling them they are wrong – and worse, closet racists – is unlikely to win their support.”

The second problem is that these ill-judged attacks only confirms Nigel Farage’s status as a Westminster outsider, the underdog that the political establishment fear and do not want to let into their cozy old boys club.

Finally, and in pure campaign terms, this group has fallen into the old elephant trap of trying to fight UKIP on UKIP’s terms. They are responding to the agenda that Nigel Farage has brilliantly set. They are following not leading the debate."

Which is as good an analysis as we have read, and long may it continue.

As for Hope not Hate, this campaign could see their ultimate collapse. Ongoing campaigns which trumpet dodgy interpretation of polling - "30% see UKIP as racist" - neatly obscures the corollary, which is that 70% do not. Even then, the poll to which they refer did not phrase the question the way they have phrased the answer, but honesty was never a strong point with HnH, was it?

More to the point, in 2009/2010, only a small percentage of Hope not Hate's funding came from private individuals - we reported previously that 83% came from trades unions. With huge numbers of Labour supporters and trades unionists now turning to UKIP, this year's European Election will mark the end of any pretence that Hope not Hate is the 'grassroots' campaign it pretends to be. We look forward to seeing their donations report to the Electoral Commission.

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.

Lowles and the hard left couldn't miss the point more on UKIP and the EU

Hope not Hate owner Nick Lowles ability to miss the point about UKIP is already almost legendary, but today he felt the need to prove it once again.

Reposting an article from Left Foot Forward on his HnH blog, he launches into the tired attack about how UKIP MEPs are the 'laziest in Europe'.

Accompanied by a fetching graphic which showed that UKIP had amended the least reports of all UK parties (apart from the SNP and the BNP, neither of which were featured), it also showed that Labour were in this respect the second laziest by their own definition, which we assume was unintended.

Just in case Lowles doesn't grasp it - HnH supporters commenting underneath their Facebook posting of it mostly don't - UKIP's job is not to help the EU stifle British industry in red tape and pointless regulation, it is to get us out of the EU: UKIP votes only on issues which it deems to be of the greatest importance to the UK, and always votes to mitigate its effects as much as possible. Aside from that, the voting process is so rushed and so opaque that it is often impossible to know what is being voted on at any one time, as Derek Clark points out in this article and in the video to the right.

In reality, Lowles is perfectly well aware of all this, but admitting as much would hardly fit with Hope not Hate's new policy of propaganda over facts, particularly where the EU is concerned. With much of their money coming from organisations or unions which are rabidly pro-EU and actively campaign for a federal Europe that is hardly a surprise while the ever closer links between the hard left within HnH and Lord Mandelson's Progress group will ensure an ever more strident pro-EU message.

Of course, Lowles and the Hope not Hate team are themselves all avid Europhiles, and remain ever ready to jump on the gravy train whenever possible. The EU's Strasbourg building even features on their 2014 calendar (pictured, left) and features Lowles and others on their trip there in 2009 to protest at the temerity of the general public in daring to vote for the BNP after Hope not Hate had only delivered 2,000,000+ plus leaflets bearing their name, thereby helping to ensure the BNPs election at the expense of UKIP candidates (who were placed just behind Griffin and Brons) in the North West and Yorkshire & Humberside. Naturally, the expenses for this trip were paid by Labour MEPs.

How all this sits with Old Labour - as opposed to the sort of New Labour represented by Lowles and Mandelson, who mistake mushy peas for guacamole - is clear to see in by-elections across the north of England. UKIP have been taking Labour votes by the truckload, and the more stridently HnH and Labour shout, the more their vote evaporates.