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

UKIPs website, and the disappearing story of it being targeted by the European Commission in 2002

Readers with a long association with UKIP and an even longer memory may recall a story which appeared in May 2002 regarding UKIPs website.

UKIP had been attracting bad publicity on the basis of postings made on the party website, which in those days also had a discussion board attached to it for members to exchange ideas. The board was moderated, but allowed real-time posting, with the admins later deleting unacceptable postings.

A number of stories had appeared in the national press regarding some of the posts. Even where they had been deleted rapidly by the admins, screengrabs from UKIPs website kept turning up on newsdesks showing comments which were blatantly, even outrageously, racist.

Eventually, UKIP had had enough, but before the discussion boards were removed, the admins and other staff went through the IP addresses of the posters, and then traced the IP addresses.

The European Commission - the source of racist postings on
UKIPs website back in 2002

It will be no surprise to learn that almost all of the postings came from IP addresses within the European Commission - and other EU institutions - in Brussels.

The reason we mention this is twofold.

Firstly, we have over the past few days spent more time than usual removing racist postings from the Nope not Hope Facebook page and various comment threads here on the blog. On Facebook, almost all of the accounts used were created within the past 2 or 3 weeks, and their entire content has been designed to link UKIP with the far-right and/or with outrageously racist comments, memes, images or statements.

Secondly, we thought we would highlight to readers the depths to which our enemies will stoop in order to maintain the fiction that UKIP is racist - after all, they have precious few other arguments.

We spent several hours attempting to locate a single story relating to UKIPs website online. This is despite it appearing on the BBC and Sky, and in the Telegraph, Daily Mail, Guardian and several other print outlets. We spoke to current and former press office staff, and they also searched without success.

In the end, the only reference we could find to this story anywhere was in a question put before the Commission by Thierry de la Perriere, an MEP from the non-aligned group in the European Parliament on the 2nd May 2002. In it, he asked:

"The British Daily Telegraph has published a report directly calling into question the behaviour of the European Commission or some of its staff.
The newspaper investigated a number of e-mails sent to the discussion forum on the anti-EU UK Independence Party's web site and containing violent attacks on that party's ideas. The source of these messages has been identified. It is the European Commission's offices in the Jean Monnet Building, in Luxembourg.
Can the Commission confirm or deny this report?
Should these allegations be confirmed, does it intend to take disciplinary action against those of its staff involved in this misuse of the European administration's time and equipment?"

The question asked in the European Parliament - the only
online reference we could find.

The question was answered over 6 weeks later by Neil Kinnock, then Vice-President of the Commission, who insisted that:

"Examination of the discussion forum has revealed no trace of a "bevy of colourful postings abusing the UKIP" by "pen pushers", as the Daily Telegraph describes it. Instead of that, an open and informed debate seems to be going on between pro and anti Union views. Neither the webmaster of the site, who moderates the discussion(2), nor other contributors to the forum appear to have been offended by the postings referred to by the newspaper."

Neil Kinnock, whose investigation into the source of the
storiesdid not involve looking at any of the evidence

Before stating that the Commission intended to take no action.

At no time during Mr Kinnock's 'investigation' did he actually contact UKIP, who of course had long since deleted the offending content, but had helpfully kept electronic records in case the Commission wished to do anything.

The internet has changed considerably since it was a minority interest back in 2002, and few could have guessed the direction in which it would head. It was also over a dozen years ago, and papers and broadcasters have updated software and websites since. We do find it interesting though that while we can find accusations of UKIP racism dating back to last century online, of this story we can find almost no trace beyond a single written question, and even that took a little finding.

Weasel - Nick Lowles, HnH owner, offered
to supply the European Movement with
'information' in 1996

So, when you read about the dreadful, racist, fascist things which UKIP 'supporters' are supposed to have said, remember this tale. UKIP have been the victim of a sustained attack along similar lines before, and subsequently it was proved that in fact, the perpetrators had been the European Commission.

Finally, remember also that back in 1996, one Nick Lowles had approached the European Movement offering to 'provide information which may be invaluable to your cause': the letter offering such support was subsequently leaked and appeared on the 'Notes from the Borderland' website in 2001. As Hope not Hate are so active in 'exposing' UKIP supporters and candidates who they allege have said racist things on social media, we wonder whether the two stories are, after all, linked?

A letter from UKIP candidate and Nigerian immigrant Olusola Esan

It is not often that we read something on the web which we feel is worth sharing without edit, but this is one of them - an open letter from Nigerian born Olusola Esan, a UKIP candidate in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. We commend it to you, and will now let him speak:

UKIP MY UKIP
My name is Olusola Esan, everyone calls me ‘Sola (Shola).
 

 As we approach the last few days to the 2015 General Election in the UK, I am compelled to write this piece and tell a bit of my story due to some of my recent experiences within and outside my family and circle of friends on my involvement with UKIP, a political party that I am very passionate about.

 I joined the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) because of their common-sense approach and their boldness to bring to light what is on the mind of an average, intelligent and sensible citizen of this great nation.

 I am a great admirer of Nigel Farage and I had been following him for almost a decade prior to joining UKIP.

 I am a migrant from one of the Commonwealth countries and a first generation Briton.

 I believe in Britain, her virtues and her values, hence my decision to be a UKIP Councillor for the Queensway Ward in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire in the UK.

 When elected, I will positively use my influence to promote equality, better working conditions and a living wage for every hard-working resident in our community, irrespective of their colour, race or birthplace.

 Being a migrant myself, I have first-hand experience of the abuse and unfair treatment of migrant workers by too many institutions but I also believe that we are a hardworking nation, endowed with hardworking citizens who have been let down by successive governments of the day.

 I believe in quality migration and not quantity migration.

 I respect education and intelligence and no highly qualified and intelligent person should be subjected to being mere labourers, doing menial and unskilled jobs, just in the name of migration. It is soul-destroying.

 

Olusola Esan - 'Sola'

To also have highly qualified Europeans working as fruit pickers and warehouse packers on minimum wages and in many cases on less than minimum wages is 21st century slavery! It’s not surprising that a lot of our youth will rather be on benefits than go for these low paid jobs.
My greatest passion in this campaign is on immigration.

 Why on earth some people do not understand UKIP’s policy on CONTROLLED IMMIGRATION, especially from the EU, beggars beliefs.

 Non-EU migrants had been massively controlled and are still being massively controlled.
The United States of America has what is called the DIVERSITY VISA LOTTERY programme as one of the ways of controlling immigration. Australia operates the Points-Based-System of migration to control immigration.

 The Conservatives in the early 1980s imposed visa restrictions on commonwealth countries like Nigeria. They were not branded racist. Nobody screamed racists or fascists at them.
Now that UKIP is suggesting the exit of United Kingdom from the EU, take full control of our borders, laws and the way we govern ourselves from Brussels and hence, limit the uncontrolled immigration from the EU got UKIP branded and smeared as a racist party.

 The unfortunate thing is that mud-slinging takes time to wear off, but the good thing is that majority of the British people can now see through the lies and hypocrisy of the other parties.

 Nowhere is it indicated or suggested in UKIP policies or manifestos that resident migrants in the UK will be sent back to their countries of origin. For anyone to even believe such a ludicrous thing is a great surprise to me.

 Should that happen, I wonder who will be left on this island… lol

 Most importantly and very pertinent to mention is the fact that UKIP is the only party to bring to light the “untouchable” issue of uncontrolled immigration from the EU and also to suggest and offer a REFERENDUM and give the citizens of UK, the opportunity to decide for themselves. (The Tories are now singing the same song but what David Cameron is not telling the electorate is that by 2017, according to Brussels, it will be too late. That’s why UKIP wants this referendum like yesterday!)
Prior to the 1980s, the United Kingdom operated free migration from the commonwealth countries and their former colonies and some Non-EU countries.

 When my father decided to migrate to the UK from Nigeria in 1964, all he did was to sell a few of his personal belongings, bought his ticket and boarded a BOAC flight to London. Why he left behind his heavily pregnant wife and 2 sons, he did not say till he died in 1984.

 When I first visited the UK in 1985 as young upwardly mobile Mechanical Engineering graduate on work assignment, I did not require a visa.

 When the government of Margaret Thatcher decided to sanction Nigeria and introduced visa restriction against Nigeria and other commonwealth countries, nobody screamed racism of fascism.
When I attempted to visit the UK again in 1992, I was denied a visa and could not enter the UK until 2001 despite several attempts.

 It takes a migrant to know what migration is all about.

 Due to skills shortage in the UK, the Labour party in the late 1990s and early 2000s used the HIGHLY SKILLED MIGRANT PROGRAMME (HSMP) to invite highly skilled and qualified migrants from Non-EU and the rest of the world, to come and work, live and make the United Kingdom their permanent homes.

 The requirements were simple and straight forward: A university degree in any discipline, certain number of years of post-graduation work experience and certain income level. Thousands of people from Non-EU qualified and were granted this special visa status with “NO RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS” boldly stamped on their passports.

 It is pertinent to mention that I was fortunate to have migrated to the UK under this CONTROLLED IMMIGRATION scheme and now proud to be a British Citizen. The unfortunate part is the realisation that I could not and still cannot practice my Mechanical Engineering profession and could not take my career any further because the jobs were not there. It was a let-down by the Labour government of the day and we realised only too late that the government of the day only wanted us for the taxes we had to pay for 4 years before being granted permanent residency (Indefinite Leave to Remain). We were to work and pay taxes “without recourse to public funds” (meaning, no form of benefits or help from the government)

 The government of the day then ‘shifted the goal post’ to 5 years and this led to the formation of HSMP LTD, a forum that challenged the decision and gave rise to the celebrated HSMP JUDICIAL REVIEW of 2004. At about the same time, the UK opened their borders to certain EU countries and when the numbers rose astronomically beyond expectations, the migrants from the non-EU had to bear the brunt.  That led to the demise of HSMP.

 I can go on and on forever but have to stop now.

 As we prepare for the next General Elections 2015 on May 7th, may I seize this opportunity to thank all the members of this great party who had been working and still working tirelessly day and night in different capacities for the success of UKIP and wish all candidates the very best of luck.

 To my son and only child, Olumurewa, who called me to express his disgust that UKIP will send him back to Nigeria because he has not got his citizenship yet, (for reasons best known to him) I say, there is nothing of such and every legal residents of the UK has nothing to worry about. Our concern is control of further influx of migrants.

 To my very good friend, Miroslawa, originally from Poland who sent me a text message to ask why I should belong to a Party that would send her back to Poland, I also say nothing to worry about. We are not living in a Third World and this the 21st Century.

 To the Afro-Caribbean couple that gave me a dirty look and hissed at me while leafletting and campaigning in the centre of Wellingborough town, and refused to even engage in a discussion with me, I would have loved to remind them that we Africans and Caribbeans, especially from the commonwealth of nations, had free migration to this country until recently and what UKIP is on about is a level playing ground for all immigrants.

 To the rest of eligible UK voters at this general election (interestingly, British citizens and qualifying commonwealth citizens); I’ll take a quote from the Sunday Express of May 3, 2015 that says:
“Britain is at a crossroads. Vote Ukip to ensure our great country is on the right path” But most importantly, be bold and proud to stand up for whatever you believe in.

 In a lighter mood, may I suggest that if United Kingdom is such a very accommodating nation, a super power, with all the infrastructures and amenities, why not open our borders to migrants from every part of the globe and make it “the more, the merrier”… lol

 In the absence of that, I will be screaming DISCRIMINATION and RACISM.

 I abhor hypocrisy with a passion.

 On a final note, my heart goes to the thousands of illegal immigrants from the Non-EU countries currently living in the UK ‘under radar’ I wonder how they are surviving and I hope whichever party or coalition that comes to power on May 8, 2015 will consider the plight of these fellow human beings. The same goes for those whose applications for continued stay in the UK are held up indefinitely in the Home Office.

 I BELIEVE IN BRITAIN.

the very best of luck to Shola - and all of UKIP's thousands of other candidates - on Thursday!

Hope not Hate photoshop Facebook 'evidence' of racism/homophobia

Last week, Hope not Hate were busy sending 'evidence' of racism and homophobia to Oxfordshire newspapers after 'uncovering' evidence on the Facebook pages of two UKIP candidates, Alan Harris and Dickie Bird.

EXIF data showing the creation date of one of the
images used in the article

Perhaps it was the date - the article was posted on their website on the 1st April - but as usual Hope not Hate's evidence is not all it appears to be.

The article, written by 'Simon Cressy' (a pointless pseudonym used by Kirklees-based HnH activist Carl Morphett) features a number of images which purport to be 'screen grabs' taken from the UKIP member's Facebook timelines.

But as the County chairman for UKIP pointed out in an e-mail, it is here that their lie is exposed. Contained within online images is data about the image itself. This data is known as 'EXIF' data, and contains amongst other information the date and time the image was created, and by whom. If we look at a sample image, we find that far from it being a post that was 3 years old, it was created by one Carl Morphett at half past eight on the 28th March. How convenient!

Some have the EXIF data stripped from them, and one - relating to a posting about Morrison's supermarket allegedly refusing to allow poppy sellers in the store - shows an image date in early 2014, indicating that it is the only genuine screengrab from the page.

To quote Dr Lee Upcraft, the Oxfordshire chairman:

"This proves that the image, reportedly a screen shot of Alan Harris’ Facebook feed, was created at March 28th 2015 at 8:32 pm. Similarly two others were also created within a few minutes of this. According to Hope Not Hate, these are screenshots of Alan Harris’s Facebook page – of postings from 2012 & 2013. Why then do they have an embedded date that is two days before the dissolution of Parliament?


If they are genuine, then they were taken just before start of the "short" election campaign. UKIP conducts extensive vetting of its candidates, and there is no chance that we would permit anybody to stand for the Party with that content on full view on their Facebook page. Nor would we allow anybody to stand who had expressed such views.

We maintain that these images are faked to smear Alan Harris. Alan is standing in a key Tory/Lib-Dem marginal seat. The Liberal Democrats lost this in 2010 to the Tories with a majority of 176. Ask yourself who is to benefit from this?"

 There are a few other points worth noting. Cressy/Morphett's article is rather strong on homophobia in places - in fact, the article is titled 'Oxfordshire UKIP candidate exposed as a racist homophobe'. This seems rather strange, as we understand that one of those mentioned shares his house with his adult son. Who is openly gay. Which makes it all the more remarkable that these two candidates would talk about 'gay pricks' as claimed.

Still, the wonder of photoshop is that you can make anyone say anything. Below we have damning evidence that Morphett and Lowles actively conspired to frame the two candidates. Needless to say, the evidence was created by our own fair hands in Photoshop.

A not at all Photoshopped screen grab from Carl Morphett's Facebook

When Hope not Hate talk about 'open and honest debate', they do so in poor faith

Hope not Hate's self-justifying article 'The 2015 UKIP threat' states in its midst:

"There is nothing wrong about talking about immigration or even expressing concern about the rate of change or immigration policy – in fact HOPE not hate has always argued that we need a much more honest and open discussion about the subject. But it is the manner of this debate that is so important."

Which leads us to wonder why later in the same article they bring up the subject of the repatriation of

immigrants. Still on he Hope not Hate website is an article copied from the Observer newspaper during the Newark by-election focussing on UKIP candidate Roger Helmer. Inspired by Hope not Hate research, the Observer attacked Helmer for comments in his book 'A Declaration of Independence', stating

"Voluntary repatriation, in which legal immigrants are given financial assistance to leave the UK, was supported at the last election only by the BNP. The last time the policy was accepted by a mainstream party was in 1970, when it was a cause of the Tory MP Enoch Powell and featured in his party's manifesto."

As we wrote at the time, voluntary repatriation of immigrants who wished to return to their country of origin was first included in Section 29 of the Immigration Act 1971, and the scheme was expanded by the Blair government in the Nationality, Immigration & Asylum Act 2002. It remains in force.

The Observer - following a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission - had the grace to apologise for the error, print a correction and withdraw the article from their website. Visitors to Hope not Hate's pages who follow the link in their article will find that it leads to a 'dead' page on the Observer.

Hope not Hate - who monitor the media both personally and via their US based consultants - can hardly fail to have missed the Observer's correction, or that voluntary repatriation was introduced by the Conservative government in 1971 and expanded hugely by the Blair government in 2002. Have they withdrawn their own version of the article, which is however you look at it simply untrue? No. So when they say

"HOPE not hate has always argued that we need a much more honest and open discussion about the subject"

Remember that what they mean by 'honest and open' is continuing to publish something which is not just spin or a matter of interpretation, but what in the old days was considered a straight lie. An untruth. A falsehood. And no 'open and honest' debate can start with such a blatant display of poor faith.

Hope not Hate - still cheering for the BNP in Bradford

Paul Cromie, former BNP councillor
supported by Hope not Hate

Hope not Hate's latest 'Purple Rain' post by 'Simon Cressy' focussing on UKIP attacks UKIP's Bradford branch after someone realised that their printing company does their printing work in Germany and not the UK. We're not quite sure what significance this has, as UKIP have never made any secret of their free-trade credentials, but we assume that when it comes to Bradford, Hope not Hate have a vested interest.
Readers may recall the local elections last year, where Nick Lowles, HnH's owner, personally congratulated a former BNP councillor who remains a close friend of Nick Griffin for his success in narrowly holding his seat from a strong UKIP challenge:


"Former BNP councillor, turned Independent, Paul Cromie, has fought off a strong challenge from UKIP in his Queensbury ward, in Bradford. Well done Paul!"

Hope not Hate's now deleted message of support for the
far right in Bradford

This was followed in December last year by howls of mock outrage after Bradford man Peter Finan claimed he felt 'intimidated' because UKIP wrote him a letter. It later turned out that the 'political innocent' was a foul mouthed twitter user with close links to the watermelon wing of the Green Party and a long history of directing abusive tweets against UKIP.

Bradford West is of course a Labour target seat. Represented by George Galloway - who is hated by HnH - and with Respect looming large in the constituency, their hope is that Naz Shah can recapture the seat. Shah, who has made a career out of being the daughter of a murderer, and whose charity - Sharing Voices (Bradford) - submitted qualified accounts to the Charity Commission less than 6 months ago, is the last minute replacement after shenanigans in the local Labour Party saw the original candidate resign within days of selection.

With the fall-out from Labour's problems in Rotherham spreading across the Yorkshire constituencies it is little wonder that HnH are desperate to halt the rise of UKIP. Scraping the barrel about the location of a printer's workshop is a sure sign of an organisation with nothing left to say.

Calls to burn down UKIP shop by members of group run by Green PPC & Labour Councillor

A Facebook group run by a Green Parliamentary Candidate, a Welsh Scottish Nationalist and a Labour councillor has members who advocated burning down the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Elspeth Parris, Green Party 'watermelon'
who is happy to associate her group
with instigators of political violence and
intimidation

The group - Merthyr says NO to UKIP - was founded by Elspeth Parris, Green PPC for Merthyr Tydfil. Other admins were David Davies, a Labour councillor in Merthyr and Harriet Protheroe-Davis, a student activist who will apparently join any campaign so long as it features a red star.

Also members of the group are two other Labour councillors from Merthyr, Darren Roberts and Rhonda Braithwaite, a Plaid Cymru PPC, Freddy Greaves, and UNISON managers Dawn Bowden and Dan Beard.

The member we are interested in though is part time musician Malik Furreed. Furreed was so incensed by the operation of democracy that he called for volunteers to 'fuck up' the UKIP shop in Merthyr which was due to open a couple of days later.




Malik Furreed's barely literate call to violence

His friend Jake Morgan was quite enthusiastic about it, suggesting that they 'burn whatever cunt goes in there as well', an idea that Malik was quite happy with. Similar comments appeared on his Facebook page. Clearly someone has been in touch, as young Malik has deleted the comments. Luckily we have the screen grabs (right).

Had it been a UKIP supporter who'd said such things about a political opponent, UKIP would have expelled them and/or cut all links to them. No such scruples in 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' though. Although the tweets and Facebook posts have been deleted, Malik remains a member. As do the Labour councillors, the Green PPC, the Welsh Scottish Nationalist and the Plaid PPC.

Perpetrators of the violent attack on the UKIP shop in Penarth

That they would put up with such threatening behaviour is hardly surprising. On the 14th December, a group of youths - one of whom does not look dissimilar to Malik - attacked the UKIP shop in Penarth, a short distance away from Merthyr. On that occasion, a gang of 6 - 5 youths and one older man who stayed safely out of range of the CCTV cameras - urinated in the shop doorway and threw beer glasses and bottles at the shop frontage. This was just 4 days before Malik was appealing for volunteers to do the same to the UKIP shop in Merthyr Tydfil.

Such behaviour in this part of South Wales is hardly new, although it has stepped up a notch since UKIP finished a narrow second behind Labour in this year's European Elections. In July last year, we reported how a UKIP candidate in Llansamlet was forced to withdraw after his wife's UNISON rep at work warned her that if her husband stood as a UKIP candidate, her career would be at an end. It is not surprise then to see two UNISON reps as members of the 'Merthyr says NO to UKIP' group - UNISON's regional manager Dawn Bowden and University of Wales UNISON secretary Dan Beard.

Protheroe-Davis and Merthyr's homeless with a
rather confusing sign

There's plenty of other hate around in the group. David Davies, group admin and the Labour councillor for Town ward on Merthyr council is a Hope not Hate activist who 'likes' Socialist Worker, UAF and In Defence of Marxism among other hard left groups. Double-barrelled class warrior Harriet Protheroe-Davis, another admin, belongs to a veritable smorgasbord of radical, hard left groups including Radical Independence Campaign, the violent Scottish Nationalist group, although her only link to Scotland appears to be as a student at Edinburgh University.

To date, actions directed against the Merthyr shop have amounted to little more than a poorly thought out sign held briefly outside the door by Protheroe-Davis and a number of Merthyr's homeless to judge by their appearance. Some speeches were made, and a lot of people who pretended to be local turned up 'spontaneously', although a significant number went to some lengths to show their affiliation with the hard left of the Socialist Workers Party by staying out of camera shot and covering their faces. A number of 'Stand up to UKIP' signs were also present: the campaign is a strange mish-mash of activists which receives funding from both the trade unions and big business through the 'British Influence' group, but is run by the SWP front UAF. As we have seen elsewhere in the country, how long will it be before they tire of their tactics of intimidation in the face of UKIPs continued rise and resort to the sort of violence advocated by Furreed and seen elsewhere in the country?

From payola to paedophilia, the establishment parties escape the media attention

Labour's Farooq Ahmed - convicted
 of hurling homophobic
abuse at fellow Labour Councillor

It has undeniably been a difficult couple of weeks for UKIP particularly in Essex. The withdrawal from the Basildon & East Thurrock selection process of Natasha Bolter appears to be one of those things about which UKIP could have done nothing: either she was a 'woman scorned', or a deliberate plant by another party, but the release of e-mails and texts she sent to Roger Bird seem to confirm that whatever she was, she was not a victim of sexism. Luckily, her sexism allegations, even if couched in terms deliberately designed to damage UKIP and with the added suggestion of racism thrown in, will have little long term effect upon the party's prospects.


More worrying in our opinion were the events which came afterwards involving Neil Hamilton and Kerry Smith. Both were victims ultimately of their own past actions and as such may not be deserving of too much sympathy. But what we find most depressing is that both were victims not of the media unearthing things which they would prefer to have remained undiscovered, but of fellow UKIP members deliberately releasing information in the furtherance of a personal agenda and regardless of the wider damage it would cause to the party.



Labour's Pauleen Gibson found guilty
of making reckless and
unsubstantiated racism allegations

We know who was responsible, but we have no intention of naming names and prolonging this rather pitiful bout of mud-slinging. We would also caution commenters to not name names below this article, as we will delete them: it serves no purpose to enter another round of recriminations and accusations. A brief look at Labour's social media output is sufficient to gauge the damage that UKIP has inflicted upon itself.

We scan the media every day. We know just how many councillors and officials from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are hauled up on accusations of homophobia and racism, and as a result, we know just how many of these make it out of the pages of local newspapers and into the pages of the nationals. The answer of course is almost none. The same is true about scandals involving expenses fraud - look at what is happening at Dorset County Council, where the Tory leader is facing criminal charges for failing to declare his interests. But we also know the extent to which UKIP is both particularly targeted for such things, and the propensity of the national media to run any local story which reaffirms UKIPs image as being both racist and homophobic.

We have attached below links to a number of articles which show the problems UKIP face: had any 

Lib Dem Stephen Fenwick (at rear)
was convicted of
racially aggravated assault

of these people been UKIP, the stories would have warranted the front page of the Daily Mail. As they were from the establishment parties, the fall-out was safely contained in the local area.

It may well be that the general public see through what the media is attempting to do, and there is some polling evidence to suggest that is the case. Whether the voting public will continue to make such allowances for UKIP when it is UKIP members who are handing the media the ammunition remains to be seen, but this sort of self-indulgent jostling for position can only serve to make us look exactly like the parties we criticise.

Cllr Pauleen Gibson (Labour, Haringey) (Feb 2014) was found guilty by a standards board of making reckless and unsubstantiated allegations of racism. She was found guilty of bringing the council into disrepute, and announced her decision to not seek re-election.

Cllr Stephen Fenwick (Lib Dem, Sutton) (March 2014) was convicted of the racially aggravated assault of a barman at the pub on Charing Cross station concourse.

Cllrs Sajaad Khan and Pervaz Khan plus three others (Labour, Middlesborough) (May 2014) resign from Labour group following re-selection process which Cllr P Khan described as "treating some of my Asian family and friends in a manner which they perceive to be racist".

Former Cllr Lester Holloway (November 2014) resigns from the Lib Dems after racist remarks, and complains that the party is not doing enough to promote racial equality and is deliberately failing to select Black and Asian candidates for winnable seats

Cllr Paulette Hamilton (Labour, Birmingham) (September 2014) deselected in Labour witch hunt, supporters warn of 'danger of becoming an apartheid city'

Cllr Farooq Ahmed (Labour, Rochdale) (June 2014) resigned from the Labour Party because they failed to give him sufficient support following his conviction of a public order offence after hurling homophobic abuse at a fellow Labour councillor in the street.

David Bishop (Conservative, Brentwood) (May 2014) resigned as a candidate after he made homophobic and racist tweets

Don't worry, there are plenty of double standards at play elsewhere. UNISON - who fund both Hope not Hate and UAF's 'Stand up to UKIP' campaign, were happy to support one of their own shop stewards who told a Polish agency worker that jobs emptying bins in Salford were for 'English people'

This is just a random selection - there are hundreds more examples of this type of behaviour by representatives of the establishment parties posted on our Facebook page which is updated daily, not to mention stuff which is far more serious: criminal offences ranging from firearms to fraud, explosives to expenses cheats, payola to paedophilia.

We accept that sometimes people say or do things which deserve wider exposure. Do these things include the contents of private letters or private telephone conversations between members of the same party? If people find themselves watching what they say when talking to fellow party members, then the true exchange of ideas necessary for political debate is gone, and we are channelling our thoughts down the same road as the establishment. Smith and Hamilton may both have been wrong - we make no judgement on the basis of politically partial leaks - but both had a right to expect their colleagues to keep private matters private.

The NHS steals desperately needed doctors from Africa, but HnH attack UKIPs health policy

More fundamental dishonesty from Hope not Hate writer 'Simon Cressy' (Carl Morphett's pointless pseudonym) in an attack on UKIP's Neil Hamilton over the NHS. Quite what the NHS has to do with HnH's 'anti-racism and anti-fascism' campaign, we don't know, although possibly it is guilt over the Labour inspired need to import doctors from Sierra Leone (1 doctor per 50,000 people) in order to sustain the NHS administration (142 doctors per 50,000 people). Who knows? Labour doesn't care, Sierra Leoneans don't have a vote here anyway. With the partial privatisation of services introduced under the last Labour government, it probably makes sense to take desperately needed doctors from third world countries rather than train enough at home anyway.


Sierra Leone - Labour and the Unions are happy to steal their
medical personnel to prop up their NHS empires

On the HnH website, Cressy puts his name to an article titled "UKIP Claim NHS is diseased and worse than Taliban". Referring to an article which is over a year old, and coincidentally discovering it on the evening that Hamilton was due to attend a selection meeting for the Basildon constituency (he withdrew), Cressy begins his distortions in the title, and doesn't let up throughout his entirely misleading article.

Take the Taliban claim. What Hamilton actually wrote was, "Since 2001, we have had 450 British fatalities in Afghanistan. During the same period, Mid Staffs hospital alone was responsible for at least 1,200 avoidable deaths....another 14 English NHS trusts ... may be responsible for 13,000 unnecessary deaths".

Neil Hamilton

In other words, what Hamilton said was the same as the original Express article's subtitle - The NHS is a more effective killing machine than the Taliban. However much Cressy's union paymasters may not like this, the statistics are true, which is more than can be said of the gross distortion of Cressy's paraphrasing of Hamilton's words.

Did Hamilton say the NHS was diseased? Yes, it was the title of the article. But what he was referring to - contrary to what Cressy implies  - was not the principle of free, universal healthcare, but rather the dominance of it by Labour and the largest trade unions and the need to break that by genuine democracy - "If we are to retain a state-funded system, it must be more democratic so that patient power counter balances the power of unions like Unison and the BMA."

That Hope not Hate should leap to the defence of the big Unions is hardly a surprise as they are heavily reliant upon them for their funding. And control of the NHS - and the £120bn annual spend and 1.4m employees - is essential if the Union's fat cats are to continue drawing banker style salaries. As Hamilton says, "Labour's shroud-waving has closed down debate on whether this is the best way to provide healthcare free at the point of delivery."

Whether you agree with Hamilton's assessment or not is immaterial, as is whether you have

Carl Morphett - not the first time he's
been caught taking lessons from Goebbels

reservations about Hamilton. Certainly his argument about debate being closed down is correct: what other point is there in deliberately distorting the whole thrust of his argument?

It borders on the obscene that on a day that Hope not Hate is singing the praises of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights they should fall back on the tactics of the totalitarian: to distort with propaganda rather than to argue with facts. The point of a democracy is to hear all sides of the argument. It is not talking about other options for the NHS but preventing those options even being open for debate which is fascist. Perhaps someone will buy Cressy/Morphett a dictionary for Christmas.

Hope not Hate: UKIP alleged sexual harrassment worse than Tory rape or Labour child abuse

The bits that Hope not Hate don't want to mention

Hope not Hate have tweeted 3 times this morning on the subject of UKIP general secretary Roger
Bird and his alleged harassment of female former Labour Party activist Natasha Bolter during her selection as a UKIP PPC.

As yet however there is no mention of Bird's response, despite it being carried online in many news outlets and having been tweeted by Channel 4 reporter Michael Crick: Bird states that he has texts and e-mails to prove that Bolter's story is not true, and that they were in a consensual relationship until the 2nd November.

UKIP's Roger Bird - a dignified response

Whichever way you slice it, Bird's response has been dignified and measured: in the Daily Telegraph article, he says, "I'm very sorry that a story like his should have arisen because it detracts from our [Ukip’s] central messages. The party had to respond in a formal way and conduct an appropriate investigation".

Texts from Bird's phone which appear to prove his
version of events is the correct one

We don't pretend to know what the truth of the matter is, although it would be strange if Bird claimed to possess exculpatory evidence which he then could not produce in his own defence. What is certain is that the matter is by no means as clear as it was presented by the Times this morning, although the Times carrying out a vendetta against UKIP on the basis of nonsense is hardly something new. For us, we hope that Bird's version is true and that he is vindicated: if it proves to be untrue, then he deserves whatever is coming to him. UPDATED - Some of the texts are now available on Guido Fawkes website and can be viewed by clicking on this link.Roger Bird appears to have been telling the truth, which begs the question - How could Natasha Bolter have thought she'd get away with it and he'd have no proof, and what game is she playing?




Hope not Hate - all accusation, no defence.

But what of Hope not Hate's newfound enthusiasm for protecting women in politics? A quick look back to their output on the 4th and 5th December shows that they tweeted exactly no times at all about the arrest for rape of Conservative MP Mark Pritchard so concerned are they about equality, women's rights and the repression of women in politics. On the same day as Pritchard's arrest, the former leader of Rotherham council, Labour's Cllr Barry Dodson, was arrested for the sexual abuse of a 13 year old girl. They had nothing to say about that either, while their carefully worded views on the wider Rotherham child abuse scandal managed to not mention the Labour Party even once, although it did spend some time explaining why Tory cuts were responsible.


Every day, Hope not Hate move just that little bit further away from their founding principles, and just that little bit closer to becoming an arm of the Labour Party and their union paymasters.

London Labour - "UKIP full of money grabbing Jews"

Updated @00:30 - Labour Press Office denies account is official Labour Party one. It is still followed by Shadow Ministers, MPs, MEPs, Cllrs and CLPs, who are this morning being treated to a series of fascists posts decrying 'white genocide'. We wonder whether the Daily Mirror will be so quick to publish the details of this account as they were to publish details of a series of fake UKIP accounts apparently set up by the same person earlier this week?

A Labour Party twitter account has accused UKIP of being 'full of money-grabbing Jews' in a
disgraceful attack on UKIP candidate Shneur Odze this evening.

Mr Odze, who earlier this week organised a 'Friends of Israel in UKIP' event attended by several MEPs and senior activists, is a longstanding member of UKIP who now resides in the North West. He is the most prominent of UKIPs many Jewish members.

the Twitter account in question - @LabourLondon - describes itself as the 'Official North London Labour presence. It is followed by Labour's Welsh Assembly Group, journalist Dan Hodges, and others including Meg Hillier MP, Jude Kirton-Darling MEP, Alison Seabeck MP, Dan Jarvis MP, Ian Lavery MP, Steve Reed MP, Sadiq Khan MP,  Cllr Tudor Evans, and Constituency Labour Parties including Barnet, Brent, Norwich, East Lothian, Redbridge, Labour Youth, Ipswich, Bedford, Aylesbury, SE Region and SW Region. Can we look forward to the howls of outrage and demands for an apology from Hope not Hate?

Update - The offending tweet was removed around 21:30 last night, and replaced with the following:

 

By 00:30, the Labour Party Press Office was denying that Labour were responsible for the account, and saying that they had nothing to do with it.



A handy guide for senior Tories

Following the news that former Conservative donor  Aaron Banks had defected to UKIP and would be making a donation to the party of £100,000, William Hague used his speech to the Tory conference to label Mr Banks 'a nobody'.

 

Self-made millionaire Mr Banks was so annoyed, he upped his donation to £1m.

 

Shaun Wright - Labour's gift to South Yorkshire

Shaun Wright - Labour's gift to the people of South Yorkshire

A statement issued last night by Shaun Wright declared that he had resigned: not as Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, but as a member of the Labour Party which had selected him as somebody fit for high office. The Commissioner post is one he intends to hang onto come hell or high water, along with its £85k salary: he is Labour's gift to Rotherham, immovable for the remainder of the term to which he was elected to by about 7 in 100 of South Yorkshire's voters as none of the parties at Westminster have bothered to act on promises to enable voters to 'recall' elected officials.

The witless Wright has a habit of hanging on until the last minute. Although he did eventually resign as councillor responsible for children's services in Rotherham when, as he claims, the 'full scale of the problem came to light', this ignores the OFSTED report on his department, in which it achieved the worst possible score in December 2009 - a '1 - performs poorly'. To quote from the letter from OFSTED to Joyce Thacker, the strategic director for children and young people's services, Rotherham's serviced were "of sufficient concern that the safety of children cannot be assured". Despite have presided over this for 5 years, Wright saw no need to go then, clinging on until the full scale of what had been done to children came to light the next year. But what role did Wright play in this? The 2006 OFSTED inspection rated Rotherham's child services as 'Good', so the decline all happened under his watch.

A sign of the esteem in which Rotherham's voters hold Wright and his associates is what happened when he did finally stand down as a councillor on election as PCC. Parachuting his wife Lisa into his old ward of Rawmarsh, the Labour hierarchy expected another easy walkover. Instead, UKIP's Caven Vines took the seat with a majority of 104 despite a Hope not Hate inspired campaign to brand him 'racist' and a 'BNP supporter' on the most tenuous of evidence - he'd once sat on a local committee with a woman who subsequently became a BNP candidate. In this years local elections, UKIP held that seat, also winning the popular vote in Rotherham and taking 9 further seats from Labour, coming a close second to them in 11 others. UKIP won the popular vote with 46% vote share, compared to 43% for Labour. Readers may recall that the UKIP surge in Rotherham began after MP Denis MacShane was convicted of expenses fraud and stood down the day before he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

Will Wright eventually resign? It looks unlikely, despite his fingerprints being all over the failure of police and the local authority to deal with the issue. Not only was he the councillor responsible for children's services, he was also vice-president of the local police authority and a local magistrate to boot. Full details of Wright's many misdemeanours over the years can be found at the excellent 'Rotherham Politics' blog which lifts the lid on local Labour's apparent inability to effectively run a piss up in a brewery.

These failings are not minor, by the way. Labour cleared a councillor of wrong-doing despite his admitted role in returning one pregnant 14 year old girl to council care after it was alleged she had been abducted and repeatedly raped by his own relatives and that this was known by Social Services. Neither the council nor South Yorkshire Police felt there was 'sufficient evidence', although they did not bother to formally interview the journalist to whom the admission was made. Cllr Jahangir Akhtar finally stood down as deputy leader of Rotherham Council in August last year, before losing his seat to UKIP in last May's elections. He was previously convicted of affray, and the 'Rotherham politics' blog lists a selection of his official misdemeanours. It is believed that Akhtar is one of the Pakistani councillors referred to in the report who are believed to have deliberately obstructed inquiries into the abductions of teenage girls.

So what does it all mean for Rotherham? Most positively, it looks like at long last the issue will be taken seriously, now Labour have found it impossible to brush the issue under the carpet any longer. For Labour, it could be the death knell for their control of Rotherham: with their councillors heavily implicated of at best turning a blind eye towards child sexual abuse for fear of being called racist, they are likely to feel an even heavier backlash than they did in this year's elections.

And then there is the Shaun Wright effect. If he continues to hang on as PCC, it will not be forgotten that it was Labour who put him there, or that he along with his Labour colleagues on the council were responsible for turning a blind eye to child abuse in order to avoid causing offence to minorities. Under his watch as PCC, South Yorkshire police could gather 30 officers and a police helicopter to search Cliff Richard's house while investigating a 30 year old claim of inappropriate behaviour, but failed to even detect 1,400 rapes of children carried out by a significant number of local Pakistani men, including those related to the former deputy leader of the council.

Today's announcement by Tory MP Douglas Carswell makes Wright's position look even more cynical: Carswell, on switching to UKIP, also stood down as an MP and will fight a by-election to ensure he has the support of his constituents. Wright resigned from the Labour Party to avoid suspension and appears determined to keep his nose in the public trough for as long as possible while occupying a position which will assist him in minimising further investigation into Labour's (including his) role in the wider scandal.

Those who have seen Wright perform on camera speak of his wooden demeanour, his monotone delivery
and his general air of disinterest in the proceeding that surround him. Since being handed what 2 years ago was a sinecure - a Labour nomination in South Yorkshire - he has proved more than adept at demonstrating that for him, it is self-interest over public interest every time. And yet more about Wright has changed than the quality of his suits over the past couple of years. It could just be that by failing to resign, he is about to hand the keys of Rotherham to UKIP.

PS - We forgot to add that some may think the new Labour MP, Sarah Champion, is free of the taint of Labour corruption in Rotherham. Not so, apparently. Her political adviser is Shaun Wright's mother in law.


 

Self-congratulating yourself for abject failure: HnH's self-deluding campaign 'analysis'

Nick Lowles -
Now lacks the smug grin after UKIPs
advances in Labour heartlands

After Lowles congratulatory tweet and blog posting (both now deleted) to a far-right former BNP councillor, his latest contribution is his 'analysis' of the elections so far.

As might be expected, his analysis is not what it quite appears to be. For a start, on UKIP he writes:

"The earthquake promised by Nigel Farage has not materialized. Yes, UKIP gained 128 seats and held on to 35 others, but at 17% of the national vote, support for the party was down from last year’s 23%."

Which may be technically true. But we reckon in England there were 4211 council seats up for election, of which UKIP contested only around 2300. As the vote share is calculated across all seats and not just the seats the party contested, that means that the 1911 seats which UKIP didn't contest count as a 0% vote share. If you take out those almost 2000 seats, UKIPs vote share in the wards it contested climbed from the 17% Lowles quotes to closer to 30%. Lowles is not so stupid that he is not aware of this, meaning his argument is somewhere between disingenuous and a downright lie. It is certainly a wilful distortion.

He then returns to the Labour fantasy that somehow it is Tories who are voting for UKIP and not Labour, dismissing as aberrations UKIPs results in Rotherham and other Labour heartlands and pointing to the 'success' of Hope not Hate's campaign in 'halting' UKIPs advance. Perhaps he should have taken a closer look at the voting figures in cities where they previously weighed the Labour vote rather than counted it. Somewhere like Bradford perhaps, where of UKIPs 16 candidates, 1 was elected, while 11 took second place, some just a handful of votes away from winning. Only 4 candidates received under 20% of the vote, while 6 scored over 30%: and this despite - or more likely because of - a sustained and concentrated effort by Hope not Hate throughout the city. A full breakdown of UKIP's results in Bradford can be found here on the local branch's blog.

Then there is some more Lowles comedy - what used to be called spin before it became so outrageous that it expects to get away with saying that white is black:

"HOPE not hate ran its largest campaign to date, with over two-and-a-half million newspapers and leaflets being distributed nationally, thousands of people involved and strong and lasting links across many local communities built. Over 3,600 of our supporters donated to our campaign over the last few months and this helped us fund an eight-page supplement in the Daily Mirror."

We have discussed their newspapers and leaflets before following the failure of their action days over the May Day bank holiday and on 'Transport Tuesday' last week. The claim that they deliverd 'over 2,500,000' leaflets and newspapers is rather strange, since on the 2nd May they announced that their

Only a week ago, HnH were asking for
help to deliver half as many leaflets as
they now claim

'Deliver Hope' campaign 'have produced over 1.3 million leaflets and newspapers', and their ability to deliver even that many seemed suspect. In Brighton they claimed to have delivered 27,000 newspapers despite having a campaign team of only 5 people for 2 days. Our suspicion is that they did indeed deliver 27,000, except that 24,000 were delivered to one of the many recycling centres run by the Green council there in a single batch.

The discrepancy of 1,200,000 leaflets can only be accounted for by including the circulation of the Daily Mirror, which included an 8 page insert shortly before polling day - Lowles was begging for the £10,000 needed to pay for it, despite Hope not Hate being awash with Labour Party and trade union funds simply to create the entirely false impression that HnH is somehow a grassroots campaign which relies on donations from individuals, whereas in fact the vast majority of its money in 2009 - 89% - came from the largest trade unions. As for the Daily Mirror, their efforts succeeded in turning out their readers to vote for UKIP on a scale previously unimagined.

Lowles then went on to make the laughable claim that:

"While not underestimating the size of UKIP’s advance, we believe that our efforts made a real difference."

So lets take a look at that real difference (with thanks to a poster on our Facebook page for the figures):

Party                              Seats before                Seats after               % increase/decrease

Labour                           3827                            4111                        +     7.4%
Conservative                 2927                            2702                         -     7.7%
Lib Dem                        1168                            893                           -   23.0%
UKIP                             17                                184                           +980.0%

Yep, that really put the brakes on UKIPs advance, didn't it?

As Lowles says in his closing remarks, 'We really did make a difference'. We'd agree. Without you, we couldn't have made the British public realise just how much of our country had been sold out from underneath us. We couldn't have made them feel that they were being lectured to by a bunch of middle class kids with no understanding of working class life. We couldn't have highlighted just how alien some of our largest cities have become. So thanks, Nick. We appreciate the help. Keep up the good work, and you just keep fooling yourself that you helped your side of the argument.

We believe Hope not Hate is now entering its final days as the anti-UKIP campaign of the Labour Party, a subject we will return to later.

On a point unrelated to this post, Hope not Hate deleted Nick Lowles' congratulatory posts to former BNP councillor Paul Cromie on his success in barely holding off a UKIP challenge in Bradford, and claimed later that the posts were 'a joke' and that Cromie 'hated them'. And yet earlier in the evening, Lowles and Hope not Hate seemed to be getting their information on how the count was progressing in Bradford from Cromie, as the following blog post on Lowles blog makes clear: