Blues and Twos and Facebook Fibs: Hartlepool Labour’s Digital Deception Uncovered...

Jonathan Brash is Labour Candidate Mark Hanson's Proposer, effectively the man who signed to put him forward as a candidate

Same Page, Different Face – Labour’s Online Deception in Throston By-Election Exposed

17th June 2025

The Hartlepool Labour Group's facing criticism over its use of a recycled social media page to promote its newest candidate in an upcoming by-election, after it was found to have been the promotional centrepiece for numerous councillors and failed candidates.

Labour, this week was caught red-handed using a recycled social media page from previously failed candidates and councillors in a bid to artificially inflate the online presence of their newest by-election hopeful, Retired Police Officer Mark Hanson, who's standing as Labours candidate in the Throston ward.

According to a tip-off sent to HBC Exposed by a sharp-eyed member of the public on the 16th June 2025, the Facebook page now promoting Mr Hanson has a shady digital past. Page transparency records reveal the account has undergone numerous name changes, previously operating under the identities of several former Labour councillors and failed candidates—most notably, none other than the disgraced former Labour councillor Steve Wallace.

Steve Wallace was elected in Throston under Labour’s banner back in 2023, only to be forced to sit as an Independent weeks later after serious allegations of sexual assault emerged. Though eventually convicted on a lesser assault charge, Wallace resigned in disgrace just weeks ago, with the same social media page that promoted his election campaign back in 2023 now being used to promote yet another prospective Labour Candidate...

The page has been the platform for numerous Labour candidates, including Labours 'ousted' councillor Steve Wallace

The moves likely to be seen as a very poor election strategy by the Labour Party, raising the claim of Labour peddling 'misinformation' out to locals. Labour’s use of the recycled social media page gives voters the false impression that their new candidate already enjoys widespread public support, when in reality, the likes and follows were actually accumulated under different candidate names, for different people, some of which failed to actually win an election...

It’s been regarded as a blatant attempt to deceive voters in what's widely considered as a make-or-break election for Labour in Hartlepool next month. With Reform UK's popularity surging and the writing seemingly on the wall for Labour’s control of the Borough Council by next year, it seems Labour now appears to be in full-blown panic attack mode—with the tactics being used in a bid to secure at councillors to keep them in control of the local council getting ever more desperate

Steve Wallace was the same Labour Councillor who was being promoted as a candidate on the same page back in 2023, he stood down earlier this month after his conviction for assault.

The most damning part though? One of the names associated with the recycled page being Steve Wallace. Labour’s decision to recycle the account of a convicted former councillor isn't just desperate—it’s disrespectful to the electorate. It tells you everything you need to know about the current state of the Labour party: no shame, no standards, no new ideas.

And for their candidate Mark Hanson? For a former police officer of an organisation that's been embroiled in corruption scandals since the 1990s, you’d think he’d know better than to endorse such underhanded tactics.

But he did work for Cleveland Police Afterall !

If Labour can’t even run an honest Facebook campaign, just how can the public ever trust them to run a borough council?