Hypocritical Labour complain about UKIP's mock leaflet in Oldham

Labour have launched a hypocritical attack on UKIP for distributing a mock Labour leaflet pointing out Jeremy Corbyn's policies.

In this year's general election Labour distributed leaflets all over the country claiming UKIP wants to privatise the NHS, even distributing them to students at a Keele University election event and in Northumberland they distributed a letter claiming that UKIP was calling for mothers to lose state benefits. In the 2013 local elections the Conservatives distributed a fake UKIP leaflet in Lancashire and Labour were doing it in the South Shields by-election.

Trade union sockpuppets, Hope not Hate, have put a considerable amount of effort into publishing fake social media content and defamatory and inflammatory material about UKIP candidates to try and prop up the Labour Party.

The Labour MP for Denton & Reddish, Andrew Gwynne, has accused UKIP of "trying to take Oldham backwards to the days of division" and says that the leaflet would only heighten fears of racial tension. Oldham saw a series of race riots in 2001 after white communities retaliated to a growing number of racist attacks from asian gangs and the violence escalated. Gwynne is claiming that highlighting Jeremy Corbyn's policies of uncontrolled immigration, abolishing the armed forces, abolishing the monarchy and ceding the Falklands to Argentina - all of which are his policies - will result in a return of race riots and suggests the timing is inappropriate because of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week.

Its hard to decide what's most pathetic - the breathtaking hypocrisy, the suggestion that exposing the Labour leader's policies will lead to race riots or using the Paris terrorist attacks for political point scoring.

With three weeks until voters in Oldham West & Royton go to the polls, Labour are 1/6 favourites to win with UKIP a fairly close second with odds of 7/2 and the vote splitting Conservatives a distant third place with odds of 100/1. Opinion polls in the run-up to the by-election in the neighbouring Heywood & Middleton constituency last October predicted an almost 6,000 vote majority for Labour when in reality UKIP's John Bickley fell just 617 votes short of taking what was once a Labour safe seat.

The polling companies will have revisited their weighting after that result and the party's massive 3.9m votes in the general election this year but they're not going to lose their bias toward the status quo. The result is going to be a lot closer than any of the polling companies predict and John Bickley stands a very good chance of winning Oldham West & Royton for UKIP.