UKIP leader Nigel Farage can be frequently heard bleating to the media about how this General Election campaign is the “dirtiest” in history.
What Farage conveniently neglects to mention is that his own party has a well oiled smear machine, which posts lies and half truths online, in the hope of tarnishing the reputations of its political opponents.
Using a “proxy” attack blog entitled “Nope, Not Hope” UKIP are able to launch various attacks on rival politicians whilst playing the “victim” card, claiming that UKIP are different to the established mainstream parties.
“Nope, Not Hope” has churned out its poisonous message for a couple of years. You can probably guess by its name that its main target is Hope not hate, probably because we reveal the truth about UKIP, a truth that Farage and the party are very uncomfortable with.
Hope not hate can exclusively reveal that one of those involved with the “Nope, Not Hope” website, along with its Twitter and Facebook page is a former UKIP spin doctor, Mark Croucher.
Croucher first became involved with UKIP in 1998 and stood as a UKIP parliamentary candidate in the Dartford constituency in the 2001 and 2005 General Elections.
In 2002, Croucher was employed by UKIP as their National Press Officer and Director of Communications by their then leader Roger Knapman and was allowed to write UKIP’s first local election manifesto.
Croucher’s standing in UKIP grew and he was soon placed in charge of the media strategy for the party’s 2004 European election campaign and in 2005 UKIP made him editor of party’s internal magazine, “Independence News”, a position he held for the next two years.
He briefly walked away from the party in 2007 but returned two years later to act as a consultant for UKIP’s European election campaign and was then given the position of Head of Media for UKIP’s new group in the European Parliament “The Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group”.
From 2011 to the present day Croucher has worked as a consultant for several of UKIP’s MEPs and is closely associated with Farage along with deputy leader Paul Nuttall and London MEP Gerard Batten.
In January 2015, Croucher was elected as Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, an apolitical Trade Union for journalists and precursor to The National Union of Journalists.
One of the lies frequently spun by “Nope, Not Hope” is a feeble attempt to link Hope not hate to violence and intimidation, a lie cooked up by Croucher & UKIP in a shabby attempt to damage our reputation and good standing with our supporters.
Another “Nope, Not Hope” lie is we manufactured fake evidence against errant UKIP candidates and officials, despite the fact that Raheem Kassam, Chief adviser to UKIP leader Nigel Farage recently admitted to the media that guilty UKIP candidates “often give a bullshit excuse about being hacked”.
Posts made by “Nope, Not Hope” are frequently reposted and reused by leading UKIP officials such as Farage, Nuttall and Suzanne Evans MEP, Deputy Chair of UKIP.
Just today, Farage and Nuttall used a story in the national media, cooked up by “Nope, Not Hope” that claimed that since the start of 2015 there has been 319 councillors from all of the other political parties who have either been convicted or stood down due to a variety of scandals and crimes, claiming that UKIP do not have a monopoly when it comes to troublesome candidates and officials.
This story was skilfully torn apart in an article by the BBC Head of Statistics, Anthony Reuben, who proved that the “Nope, Not Hope” story had more holes than a Swiss cheese.
So when Nigel Farage talks of “dirty campaigns” he knows what he is talking about.
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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