Labour announce new policy on EU for Stoke by-election

Snell begins Stoke campaign with Hope not Hate funding scandal

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Snell begins campaign with funding scandal

Gareth Snell, Labour’s PPC for the Stoke-on-Trent Central seat vacated by Tristram Hunt, is set to begin his campaign facing questions about election expenses after it was revealed a leaflet attacking UKIP candidate Paul Nuttall was funded by an organisation run by a close colleague and fellow Labour councillor.

The leaflet – “6 reasons to vote against UKIP” – bears the imprint of Hope not Hate and local

The Hope not Hate/NORSCARF leaflet

delivered with Labour leaflets

campaign ‘Norscarf’ (North Staffordshire Campaign Against Racism and Fascism), proving there’s nothing like self-interest to bring together the Progress and Momentum funded wings of the Labour Party. The leaflet is helpfully printed in Labour’s red and yellow colours.

The registration of the Norscarf website lists a single contact phone number – 07563245515. A quick Google of that number reveals it is the personal mobile phone number of Councillor Chris Spence, a colleague of Snell’s on Newcastle under Lyme Borough Council, which neighbours the Stoke Central constituency. Spence originally put his own name forward to be the candidate, but failed to make Labour’s long list.

Our source reveals that he received the leaflet – alongside a Labour one – on Saturday evening (the 21^st January). Which is interesting, as Gareth Snell tweeted a photograph that evening of Spence delivering Labour leaflets in the same area of Stoke under the caption ‘What better way to spend your evening after a hard day at work than campaigning for @Stoke_Labour and our #NHS’. If you look at the picture, you can see the ‘6 reasons’ leaflet sticking out of the top of the Labour one, which may explain the ‘winky face’ Spence finished his Tweet with.

Snell's colleague Cllr Chris Spence delivering Labour

leaflets - the HnH/NORSCARF leaflet can be seen

sticking out of the top of the Labour one

The participation of Hope not Hate – funded by the anti-Corbyn ‘Progress’ wing of the Labour Party – with the decidedly Corbynite ‘Norscarf’ is perhaps less surprising that it appears. Stoke North MP Ruth Smeeth is a former General Secretary of Hope not Hate, while Tristram Hunt, Stoke’s outgoing MP, is a member of the Labour Friends of Israel, one of the few groups in the Labour Party which stood by Smeeth after she was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by Labour members when it announced the outcome of its investigation into anti-Semitism. Snell – a former leader of Newcastle Borough Council who lost his seat to UKIP before regaining a different seat at a by-election - is on Hunt’s staff.

A senior UKIP source said that it was "rare for expenditure scandals to begin before the candidate had been selected but was a clear indication of just how worried Labour were about losing the formerly safe seat to the new UKIP insurgency."

UKIP insiders say that they expect Labour to include the cost of the Hope not Hate leaflets on their expenditure returns as they are clearly published with a view to aiding Labour's faltering chances of retaining the seat. A UKIP source close to the campaign said, "They are required to account for all expenditure. The active participation of two organisations with close links to the Labour Party using Labour councillors to deliver the leaflets alongside official Labour literature with the clear approval of the candidate makes it difficult to pretend these are anything other than Labour leaflets in disguise. Hope not Hate have considerable form for this sort of thing, which has gone unremarked and unpunished for too long. It simply allows Labour to effectively double its election spending without having to account for it."

A poll for Labour Leave published on Wednesday showed Nuttall 10% ahead of Labour, while on Thursday bookies shortened the odds on a UKIP victory to make the party the odds-on favourite, with Labour slipping to evens ahead of the also-ran Tories and Lib Dems on 33-1.

Doing Labour's work - the BBC & the list of dodgy councillors

It is always nice to know the BBC is keeping an eye on our figures. In their 'Reality Check' on our list, Anthony Reuben, Head of Statistics at BBC News says in an article titled 'Have 319 councillors really stood down in 2015?"

"The number comes from a blog called Nope, Not Hope but it does not make quite the same claims about it that Mr Nuttall makes."

And then continues

"And if you look at some of the miscreants cited in the list you may doubt the figure further."

OK, we accidentally included the Moroccan born mayor of Rotterdam saying that "Muslims who didn't like the Netherlands should f**k off back to where they came from". Clearly he is not a British councillor. That said, if you count the number of stories in the master document, there are 292, not 291, meaning the Dutch mayor is not counted: the inclusion was a typographical error, with two lines selected rather than one when the document was compiled.

Reuben then complains that 'There are examples of the wives and children of councillors getting into trouble, although they themselves were not investigated."

The two examples he links are interesting. The first involves the wife of a Tory councillor who was convicted of theft. Her husband subsequently resigned as a councillor as a result of her conviction. The second relates to the son of a Rochdale Labour councillor who was arrested on the Syrian border attempting to travel to join ISIS, and who was subsequently released without charge on his return to the UK. We'd consider that both of those - had they involved UKIP - would have warranted coverage on the BBC and elsewhere. It's not as if the BBC doesn't focus on the nationality of Nigel Farage's wife, as in this story - "Nigel Farage says German wife is not taking Briton's job"

He then states that a Plaid Cymru councillor arrested and charged over an assault on his wife who was cleared at court when his wife refused to give evidence against him "should not be on the list anyway" as "he does not count as being affiliated to Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats". Had he read the introduction to the PDF he would have read:

"This PDF file lists all the councillors we can find from other parties who have been accused of..."
Reuben does concede that

"This does not mean that UKIP has a monopoly on candidates getting into trouble though. The Liberal Democrats, for example, replaced Jason Zadrozny as their candidate for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire after he was accused of child sex offences.
The Conservative candidate for Dudley North Afzal Amin resigned over claims of a plot between him and the English Defence League. Both cases were widely reported."

Although he fails to mention the so far nationally unreported (by the BBC nationally) convictions of two Labour candidates in separate trails last week for fraud, with one being sentenced to 2 1/2 years imprisonment.

So, out of a list of 291 councillors from Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservatives, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens, he finds 4 to complain about. Of those, only 1 shouldn't be on the list - the Dutchman - and he wasn't counted in the total anyway.

What we actually clearly claim for the list is as follows:

This PDF file lists all the councillors we can find from other parties who have been accused of racism, sexism or homophobia, those who have been arrested, sentenced or convicted of crimes, and those who are just plain useless, offensive or incompetent. We have tried to avoid duplication. Almost all of those featured have appeared only in the local press - very few have made the national media. Links to online sources are provided for all stories.

 

The original list can be downloaded as a pdf file here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B39PL1hZ6W_ReC00Ni1iWFJ3OFU/view?usp=sharing