A Labour activist has said UKIP are “enemies of Islam”, warning Muslim voters they will go to hell if they fail to vote Labour at the upcoming Stoke by-election.
Hussein — who has posed for photographs with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as well as the party’s local candidate Gareth Snell, said UKIP “hate[s] Muslims” and want to privatise the NHS in another message seen by The Sun.
Hussain has been reported to the police and elections watchdog by the Liberal Democrats, whose leader Tim Farron noted that the messages constitute “illegal activity”, and are “strictly prohibited under election law”.
But in a post sent to Muslims on Facebook, the activist implies that UKIP has been engaging in illegal activity during the campaign.
“Don’t be complacent, hundreds of UKIP supporters have been brought to Stoke-on-Trent to campaign for UKIP, they are spending massive amounts of money on the campaign (which will be investigated afterwards)”, he wrote.
Tariq Mahmood, a local UKIP activist who received the message warning Muslims not to help “enemies of Islam”, described the attack on his party as “outrageous” to The Sun.
Ahead of next Thursday’s election, a Labour spokesman said the party was “not aware of” and “did not sanction the sending of these messages”.
The by-election in Stoke-on-Trent Central, one of the most fiercely Brexit-supporting areas of the country (69.4 per cent in June’s referendum), comes as YouGov recently revealed that Labour is now only the third most popular party amongst working class voters.
Mr. Snell was selected by Labour to stand in the constituency despite his opposition to the UK leaving the European Union being so strong that he penned a short poem describing Brexit as a “massive pile of sh*t”.