Car crash blogging as HnH consumed by jealousy and hate

Hope not Hate have spent the morning writing a blog post on Nigel Farage, UKIP's leader, and his past statements on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants after controls are removed at the beginning of next year.

It has not been a good week for Hope not Hate. After finding themselves overshadowed by the 

Nigel Farage (l) with fellow UKIP MEPs
Stuart Agnew and Derek Clark

Quilliam Foundation over the departure of Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll from the EDL, most of their postings have been directed to mocking the sincerity of any of the parties involved. Quilliam, whose receipt of money from the public purse dwarves Hope not Hate's publicly funded handouts, have long been a target of animosity for the hard left from which Hope not Hate and the UAF draw the majority of their support, not least because it dares to actually educate and act, rather than propagandise and stir up hatred.

Thus we see the unedifying spectacle of Hope not Hate's jealousy breaking out unashamedly on their assorted blogs, switching between wistful envy, jealous mockery and, ironically, outright hate.

Part of HnH's angst is because while they focussed on UKIP, they took their eye off of the EDL and have consequently been left looking rather foolish. Their claims of 'inside intelligence' from the far-right did them little good when they were forced to admit they'd learned of Robinson & Carroll's EDL resignations from normal media outlets. So much for the actions of their own tame Nazi, HnH head of intelligence Matthew Collins.

Then there are the results of last nights local by-elections across the UK. Despite the best efforts of Hope not Hate, UKIP again polled well above their opinion poll levels gaining a seat in Haverhill with 43.4%, and polling 20% in South Staffordshire, 17.6% in Selby, 18.5% in Salford, 23.2% in Barnsley and 9.4% & 9.2% in Manchester and West Lancs respectively.

Today's tack therefore is to attack the mainstream media for daring to give Farage and UKIP a platform - one which is increasingly denied to Hope not Hate as the past week accelerates their slide into irrelevancy.

With righteous indignation in full flow, they demand evidence for assertions that there will be a flood of Romanian criminals and deny with some pretty evasive statistics that Romanian gangs are responsible for any more crime than any other ethnic group. And this just a couple of months after banker's associations and the City of London police stated clearly and uncategorically that Romanian gangs were responsible for 90% of the UK's ATM fraud at cash machines.

It also ignores figures from February this year which demonstrated that up to a third of Romanians living in the UK had been arrested for criminal offences - over 27,000 out of a total of 84,000.

Neither of these figures were produced by or at the behest of UKIP, a fact which HnH deliberately overlook.

The week has further demonstrated not only Hope not Hate's irrelevancy to the current political debate, but has highlighted their own failures. While the Quilliam Foundation is prepared to tackle not just the far-right but also Muslim extremism, Hope not Hate's efforts on the latter amount to little more than tokenism: we discussed last week their latest anti-Islamist 'campaign', which they jumped on board of late, and which consisted of HnH owner Nick Lowles writing a single letter and making one blog post.

Their failure is demonstrated neatly by the anti-Farage article attacking the media. Despite the air of authority with which it is written, it fails to tackle inconvenient facts like those regarding Romanian crime above. While asking what to do about the '4,000 doctors and nurses' - actually medical workers would be more appropriate, for the vast majority are care assistants - and 7,000 Romanian students, it fails to address or even mention the 27,000+ Romanian arrests. It is all very well quoting the Romanian ambassador to the UK saying how wonderful and law abiding Romanian expatriates are, but he is hardly an unbiased source, and his comments fail take into account the criminality figures.

And so we see Lowles and his crew retreat into the sort of Stalinist hyperbole and myth from which they came as they attempt to salvage a working and relevant organisation from what is increasingly becoming a car crash in slow motion. Their campaign against the EDL looks decidedly shaky as that organisation appears set to collapse into chaos, while their campaign against UKIP seems to be driving more voters to UKIP than the reverse as the ordinary working class recognise the truths that HnH refuse to see.