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:

Of frauds and forgeries

Prominent on Hope not Hate's website today - although yet to make it to their Facebook page - is their "100 days to stop UKIP" campaign, complete with a plea for funds from Nick Lowles. We're not convinced that using a slogan already used by Nick Clegg will prove to be an asset, but Hope not Hate have never been strong on originality: most of their methods have already been tried and tested by Josef Goebbels after all.

Still, Lowles can barely contain his excitement at it all. He breathlessly gushes about how 'just £15 will pay for 1,000 anti-UKIP leaflets', and '£100 will pay for 500,000 online ads' - remember boys and girls, if you ever see an online ad for HnH, be sure to click it to help them spend their budget!

Lowles also talks about their planned 'Campus Call Outs at dozens of universities where we'll register and mobilise student voters". Given their links with the Labour Party, we're sure that such registrations will in common with the TULO/Unions Together efforts be diverted via the Labour Party national communications centre in Newcastle.

The vast majority of HnH's funds come not from the public,
but from the Union barons

The question which really needs to be asked is why Lowles bothers with such campaigns at all. A
quick check through the Electoral Commission's records of regulated donations to Hope not Hate shows that in fact, of the £542,893 reported since 2004, a mere £88,618 has come from members of the general public - less than 17%. The remainder - £454,275 - has come from the trades unions and bodies such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust.

It is of course rhetorical to ask why. Hope not Hate's own 'about us' section still states "HOPE not hate mobilises everyone opposed to the British National Party’s (BNP) and English Defence League’s (EDL) politics of hate" - no mention of UKIP - and likes to give the impression that it is a grassroots campaign. Needless to say, that is not the case - it relies heavily on the unions, the Labour Party and political charities to fund its cause. If it relied solely upon private donations, it would have gone bust many years ago.

The old saying does however remain true - he who pays the piper calls the tune. As we have said before, with recent newspaper polls showing UKIP to be the best regarded party amongst the general public, Labour and their Union paymasters are desperate to head off the challenge in what Labour regard as 'their' heartlands. As we discussed in our last posting, there are no depths to which they will not stoop in order to achieve this end, and Hope not Hate are increasingly becoming the front organisation they hope to use to do it.

For Hope not Hate to be credible, it is necessary that they continue to present themselves as a grassroots campaign and not as they really are, a tool of the unions and Labour and powered by multinational consultants in Blue State Digital.

What does that mean for the whole "100 days to stop UKIP" fundraising campaign? It is nothing more than a charade. The union barons will pick up the tab for a sophisticated on-line, anti-UKIP campaign, while the rank and file are viewed as little more than an irritant except when there is violence against UKIP to be incited.

Although Hope not Hate's entire campaign is based on a lie, one question remains: would they be prepared to pay for UKIP infiltrators to spill the beans? A letter has been doing the rounds which purports to come from Simon Cressy promising payment for UKIP 'secrets'. For a whole host of reasons - not least that Simon Cressy doesn't exist, but is a nom de plume for HnH employee Carl Morphett - we are forced to conclude that the letter is a forgery. In a fast growing party such as UKIP, it is far easier to get their own supporters to sign up and attend UKIP meetings than it is to pay for information, and we are forced to conclude that the continued circulation of this letter is likely to be counter-productive.

Why so? Because unlike Hope not Hate, UKIP is a genuinely grassroots organisation. We are well regarded by the voting public, and are not in the pockets of anybody. While Hope not Hate, Labour and the trades unions are quite happy to lie, cheat and steal in order to blunt the force of our message, we have no need to descend to such depths. The British public are increasingly behind us, and we are happy to stand on our own beliefs: the use of forged documents will not help us in this.

Lowles ignores the blatant lie in his rush to attack UKIP

Yet another story which doesn't make sense on Nick Lowles 'Purple Rain' blog, although for regular

Sinclaire - quickly wrote a book and had it published and
printed in order to head off slow-moving threat

readers that will not be a surprise.

The lastest story is a repost of a BBC article about former UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire, who is now claiming that 'UKIP made sex change revelation threat'. The article begins "An MEP has told the BBC she revealed her gender reassignment secret because of threats from journalists and her former colleagues in UKIP."

Contrast this with Sinclaire's quotes in the Daily Mail just last week when she said,

"her fellow UKIP politicians had been very accepting of her sexuality, whereas she had encountered the most homophobia from Liberal Democrats"

 

and that

 

 "'There was one great secret that Nikki never shared with anyone other than her family and close friends."

We find ourselves mystified as to how someone who never told anyone apart from family and friends could be threatened with exposure by UKIP politicians who only last week she described as 'supportive'.

Part of the reason for this is revealed by the following quote. Miss Sinclaire, 54, said, "They threatened to expose this and this is why I felt the need. Because people asked: 'Why are you saying this now? Basically, I wanted to put my side of it before someone else put a distorted side out."

Most people who wanted to 'put their side' before 'someone else put a distorted side out' would call a press conference. Such traditionalism is not for Ms Sinclaire, who speedily responded to the supposed 'threat' by not just writing an entire book, but also having it published and printed.

Not unnaturally, speculation about Ms Sinclaire had existed at all levels of the party for almost 20 years. She is after all a 7' tall flamboyant lesbian with a lantern jaw the size of Norfolk and a voice like she's been gargling with gravel. Had she simply told the truth, UKIP members would have shrugged their shoulders and moved on. Nobody cared about her much flaunted sexuality, and nobody would have cared whether her lack of penis was natural or not either.

Ms Sinclaire's current story contradicts what she said only last week, and this has been her problem throughout her career. Hope not Hate are perfectly well aware that what she says bears little relation to reality, and while they have occasionally used her self-publicising outbursts against UKIP on their own blog even Lowles apparently gives it little credence. As Sinclaire remains on police bail following her arrest for expenses fraud in 2010 this is hardly surprising, while her response to being expelled from UKIP has been online for many years with her explaining how it will 'make her very rich' as she gets to keep her MEP expenses all for herself.

Sinclaire standing head and shoulders above her team -
Cartwright is on the far right

For Lowles and Hope not Hate, their glee in publicising Sinclaire's latest flim-flam is doubly surprising as despite her oft-repeated reasons for leaving UKIP, she continues to employ a former National Front activist and far-right candidate as her political adviser. Gary Cartwright stood as a National Democrat candidate in a Southwark by-election some years ago and continues to write articles defending historian David Irving, who denies the Holocaust. Despite her long-running association with Cartwright, HnH continue to publicise her self-serving nonsense without criticism, although it is difficult to imagine any other person being given such an easy ride. Perhaps it is her sexuality which accounts for it? - while Hope not Hate are happy to mock the mentally ill, sexual preference remains an achingly trendy topic for the far-left. That said, they were happy to allow the EDL leadership to be described as 'gay' and 'faggots' on their Facebook pages. Perhaps the truth is more prosaic: to Lowles and his fellow travellers, the enemy of their enemy is their friend, and sod the morality of it. HnH do themselves employ a number of former BNP and NF activists.  

 

 

Self-preservation more important than fighting homophobia - HnH's official position

Yesterday evening saw Hope not Hate proclaim the success of their latest 'campaign', this one to stop a conference in Edmonton, North London called 'Beloved of Allah'. Their objection was that the conference was homophobic and incited hate against the gay community. On Nick Lowles blog, he

When it comes to campaigns, money is more
important than principle - Nick Lowles

wrote:

"Last week I blogged about a conference being held in London, scheduled for this weekend.

Entitled, ‘Beloved to Allah’, the conference agenda featured several Homophobic hate preachers. The one day conference was due to be held at the Edmonton Islamic Centre (Sunday 6^th October).

I am pleased to announce that after a campaign by HOPE not hate and other partners the Centre has cancelled the event. We understand that this may be the first time an event of this type has been cancelled.

HOPE not hate believe it is important to be consistent in our opposition to hate speech. Just as we would speak out against right-wing homophobes, so too must we voice our opposition to those in any community or faith who vocalise violence and even death against others."

 

So how does this campaign compare to others run by Hope not Hate? The original blog posting amounted to just 550 words posted the previous Friday, and of these, just 176 words were devoted to actually addressing the rally itself. The remaining 374 words were biographies of three of the speakers, none of whom had said anything not said by a huge number of radical Imams - previously which had been ignored by Hope not Hate, as detailed in our earlier blog postings. In fact, such views remain commonplace not just within the Islamic faith, but within Christian groups too, such as the Roman Catholic church, which also takes a pretty dim view of homosexuality. Can we look forward to HnH's forthcoming anti-Catholic campaign?

So how serious was this campaign? Lowles wrote, "HOPE not hate believes that this is unacceptable. We will be writing to the Centre to outline our concerns about these rabidly anti-gay views and to ask them if such individuals are 'right' to be speaking in their building.". And that was it.

Of course, Hope not Hate don't normally care what hate speech is being peddled by the radical: they didn't bother with Anjem Choudhary's Islamic Emergency Defence group: Mohammed al-Arefe and Sheikh Yasser al-Habib barely caused a ripple: and music festivals run by a rapist in the form of Martin Smith are actively promoted.

Still, perhaps there was a call to arms to fight such homophobic prejudice on their front page? Perhaps not. As the screen grab below shows, the 'Beloved of Allah' meeting wasn't even worthy of a front page caption and graphic. Instead, Hope not Hate were continuing to fight for their right to work for the Labour Party by gagging its opposition

Yesterday's HnH front page shows no sign of any 'campaigns' apart from those designed to keep
the money rolling into Hope not Hate's coffers

No. Far more important was their campaign to evade government regulation to allow them to participate in elections without the bother of having to be accountable to the voters, and the need to tout for more donations. The only campaign which truly matters is their 'Purple Rain' campaign designed to blunt the rise of UKIP. Talk of 'campaigns' which on closer examination consist solely of Nick Lowles writing a letter are there simply to keep up the pretence of even-handedness.

Compare this with the campaign waged by HnH just a few months ago designed to keep Pam Spencer and Robert Geller out of the UK - while ignoring the arrival of al-Arefe and al-Habib - and the hypocrisy requires no further words from us.

Another lungful of HnH hypocrisy

Hope not Hate this evening posted the story which has appeared in the Guardian newspaper which attempts to suggest that there is something wrong with UKIP accepting a £25,000 donation from e-cigarette firm Pillbox 38 because UKIP has consistently voted against EU legislation which would outlaw their products. UKIP has always been against legislation which interferes with personal choice on both smoking and smoking replacement products. Hope not Hate's comment was 'is it me, or is this slightly dodgy'. The £25k represents less than 20% of UKIPs total donations.

Meanwhile, the same release of donor information showed that the Labour Party (who fund Hope not Hate) received over £2.4 million from the Trade Union movement (who also fund Hope not Hate). The trades unions have opposed the austerity drive by the current government which seeks to reduce state spending and, as a consequence, state employment, and Labour has voted in line with the trades unions wishes in Parliament. The £2.4m represented 77% of Labour's total donations.

Strangely, Hope not Hate have no comment to make on how dodgy this is, but as they receive money from both sides, that's hardly surprising. Just another dose of HnH hypocrisy.