Alex Wood was a victim of a criminal smear campaign

Police have confirmed that the UKIP candidate called "the ugly face of UKIP" by the Daily Mirror was the victim of a smear campaign.

A picture of Alex Wood supposedly doing a Nazi salute was printed along with racist comments that did not appear on his Facebook profile.  The story was picked up by the media and the anti-UKIP pressure group, Hope not Hate and Wood was branded a racist despite protestations that he was innocent.

The police have confirmed that the racist comments that the Mirror and others claimed were made by Wood on Facebook didn't appear on his Facebook account and are satisfied that in the picture he is simply reaching for his girlfriend's phone to try and stop her taking a picture of him fooling around as he claimed from the outset.

The Mirror haven't published a correction or apology for defaming Alex Wood, nor have Hope not Hate who attacked him more than once.  The Huffington Post, which has been anti-UKIP almost since inception, haven't apologised for branding Wood a racist but have reported the outcome of the police investigation which is as close to a mea culpa as he's likely to get out of that Guardian wannabe rag.

We look forward to the police clearing Cllr Chris Pain's name too.  He was also branded a racist - and explicitly so by Hope not Hate - over comments that don't appear on his Facebook account and appears to have been a victim of the same criminal smear campaign.

Just to show how easily these things can be mocked up, this took less than 5 minutes to produce using one of the hundreds of websites out there that have been set up to create fake Facebook walls.