The sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate

Of all the blights on our politics, there are few more tedious than the left-wing campaign group that masquerades behind some poorly constructed frontispiece.

The Resolution Foundation – run by the gloriously named Torsten Bell – is a fine example. Torsten allows his publishers to call his Foundation ‘an enormously respected and influential economic research charity’. You may have heard of it, or you may be one of those who focuses your enormous respect elsewhere, but you will probably have seen the BBC and others regurgitate its press releases in lieu of doing actual journalism. The Resolution Foundation routinely discovers things like many people in Britain are poor or ill or suffer from mental health problems. The cause is always Tory cuts. The solution is always more money. Because if only we gave even more money away in taxes one day nobody in Britain will feel sad.

All that the geniuses at HNH had to do was sit at home eating crisps and screen-shotting tweets

I only mention this enormously boring organisation because it is of a type. Torsten used to be Ed Miliband’s head of policy (which makes it rather surprising he isn’t yet Lord Bell – give it time). In any case, as we gear up to an election, you can expect dear Torsten to release more reports ‘revealing’ nasty things to which Labour is the answer.

These people are not even good at disguising their politics. Just this week Torsten was on Twitter writing that Suella Braverman’s warning that we are ‘sleepwalking into a ghettoised society’ was the former home secretary ‘talking garbage’. But don’t expect to hear Torsten questioned about his language next time the BBC gives a fawning interview to him.

Most of these groups give themselves more obvious names; indeed they name themselves in a way which is meant to make them unopposable.