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 attempt to evade Lobbying Act breaks electoral funding law as 30% of website users non-UK resident

Website campaign accepts donations from impermissible donors

Things are set to go from bad to worse for Nick Lowles following his latest attempt to get around the reporting requirements for electoral expenditure to the Electoral Commission.

The new lobbying act (more formerly the Transparency of Lobbying, non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014) has caused problems for his personal cash cow and influence machine.

Yesterday saw him asking for donations of £1 from each of the people who visit Hope not Hate's website in order to demonstrate - falsely - that they're a grass roots organisation and not a professional Labour Party front financed by the Unions. This overlooks the reality that in the 2010 general election, 83% of their funding came from the Unions or organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and only 17% from donations from the general public even if we stretch the term 'general public' to its limits. Desperation has driven him to repeat that call this morning: while the normal fare of internet memes with bland platitudes gain many hundreds of shares, yesterday and today's call for £1 donations have generated just 2 shares. One from a self-professed UAF/SWP supporter linked to AntiFa, and the other from someone who claims not to have enough money to afford a quid.

Just one small problem though. Although the £1 donations may help him pretend he has grass roots 


HnH's 'traffic sources' according to internet
traffic and ranking company Alexa.
20% of HnH''s web traffic is from Belgium.

support, they are likely to raise another problem. If you look at the analytics for Hope not Hate's website, you will notice that only 70% of the website's traffic is from the UK. Almost 20% is from Belgium - what organisations could be based there which have a vested interest in an anti-UKIP group, we wonder? - and 7% from the United States: HnH's consultants, Blue State Digital, are based there. Lets not forget that Blue State Digital 'accidentally' forgot to bill Hope not Hate VAT back in 2010 either, thereby evading at least £70,000 of tax.

In case its not clear, the big red button
says 'Donate' on it

As you can see from the infographic, this causes something of a problem for Nick. Why? Because at the bottom of the page where he is advertising for people to become an HnH supporter for only £1, it doesn't say 'Pay', it says 'Donate'. And, in fact, a donation it is, because you don't actually get anything for your money apart from a thank you e-mail: in case Nick has it changed, we've screen-grabbed it for posterity.

So what is the problem? Hope not Hate is planning to use these funds to campaign against UKIP. Lowles wrote a long, self-congratulatory article praising himself on the 10th anniversary of Hope not Hate and setting out how UKIP is now the target, while the donation advert itself specifically states "All the money raised will go directly to our 2015 campaign fund." There's only one problem with that. He is touting for donations amongst a pool of internet users of which barely 70% are UK resident. The other 30% don't live in the UK and therefore, according to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Schedule 11, part I, to be precise) these people are impermissible donors from whom Hope not Hate can not accept even a penny.

Despite this, nowhere on the donation form does it ask whether people are permissible donors, and in fact it gives a pull down list of countries and asks for 'Region/State/Province' almost as if they expect impermissible donors to use the site.

Needless to say, we will be drawing this to the attention of the Electoral Commission. We have had a couple of people who are impermissible donors make a contribution to their campaign funds, and each time, it was accepted with the following message:


Nick and the HnH team thanking us for our impermissible donation to their
anti-UKIP general election fund. Made by a non resident, non-UK national.

UPDATE - 14:30hrs

Nick Lowles has just posted on his blog that to date they have received contributions from 'over 2000' people, and he is upping their target to 3,000 by Friday. Which means by Friday, he will have taken donations from around 900 impermissible donors for their political campaign against UKIP.