6 days ago
How my beloved Green Party lost the plot
I refuse to accept that the Green Party is a lost cause. But, boy, how we have fallen from grace. I joined 23 years ago, following a stint drafting environmental briefings in the European Parliament. I was feeling positive about how Greens were able to effect change internationally.
We didn't do identity politics on steroids back then. During bi-annual conferences and internal debates, we enjoyed discussion on all manner of topics, from peace in the Middle East and our future in Europe to decriminalising prostitution (bad idea).
We could debate knowing that even on the most divisive issue – win or lose a conference vote – there was more that united than divided us. My party felt like a university in which impassioned debate and persuasive thinking carried the day, whether on policy or electoral strategy. How things have changed: viewpoint diversity, once embraced, has now become extinct in the Greens.
I'd probably mark Autumn 2016 as the point when the identitarian turn really started to take grip of the party. This coincided with the end of my term as Deputy Leader (of course!) and Aimee Challenor (the party's equality spokesperson) successfully moving a motion on trans rights that said: 'Transwomen are women'.
I missed the debate, but already sensed a determination by Challenor to win at all costs. A hallmark of authoritarian groupthink is voting a certain way because someone tells you to, not because you've reasoned your way there. That same year Challenor's father David was charged with raping a ten year old child.
David Challenor, who had been Aimee's election agent, was sentenced in 2018 for 22 years for child sex offences. Aimee resigned after an investigation was launched into failures of disclosure. I was one of a few people to call out the double standards at the heart of the party's refusal to condemn or criticise the Challenors. But as a party we couldn't bring ourselves to properly reflect on how we had left ourselves so vulnerable to entryism from gender ideology extremists.
Fast forward to today. Gender ideological insanity has accelerated to such a degree that, year on year, scores of gender critical activists have now been persecuted or purged out of the party for wrongthink. Four successive co-chairs of Green Party Women – Emma Bateman, Zoe Hatch, Dawn Furness and Amanda Stones – have been suspended or expelled. Darren Johnson, a London Assembly member for 16 years, was suspended. Eric Walker, a 100-year-old D-Day veteran, was suspended.
Not content with unlawfully removing me as a spokesperson, the party now faces a second court case after revoking my membership.
This is the first leadership bid I've been debarred from contesting. It is with sadness that I witness the descent of my party into the entrenched identity politics so typical of the hard Left.
Out of the candidates for leader or deputy, not one is openly gender critical. None unequivocally supports the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex in the Equality Act or commends the Cass review for safeguarding youth from 'gender affirming' medical malpractice.
Zack Polanski, famed for allegedly offering a breast-enlargement hypnosis service, has been insistent on getting rid of single-sex spaces. On the LBC leadership debate, he repeatedly affirmed the right of people with penises, however they identified, to be welcomed into refuges for women seeking support and protection from abusive men. Polanski's views are abhorrent and directly contrary to any rational extension of our commitment to single-sex provision in hospital wards.
It is not just over gender that the Green Party has lost its way. It has also done so over ethnicity and religion. The fear of religious fundamentalism in society is rising. Yet the Green Party are shamelessly exploiting the conflict in Gaza to court the Muslim vote. This is cynical and divisive. Like Polanski, I despair about the unconscionable war crimes being perpetrated by Israel upon Gazans, but Hamas should not escape our condemnation for their ongoing crimes committed against innocent Israeli hostages.
Years after I locked horns with him on how not to define anti-Semitism, Polanski now rides roughshod over Jewish sensitivities in an effort to rebrand himself as the saviour of the Palestinians and ally of Corbyn. This is a striking development because in 2018 he tweeted that he 'was a pro-European Jew' and that these were 'two reasons I couldn't vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn'.
His outpourings on the conflict have become so tribal that, not only would we be poorly placed to broker peace with his stated genocidal enemy; but we risk alienating the Jewish community in the UK by fuelling the rise of anti-Semitic sentiment itself.
Councillor Mothin Ali, our latest Muslim poster boy and deputy candidate, has also defended his focus on Palestine after being criticised for crying 'Allahu Akbar' upon election. Mothin is no fundamentalist, but nor have his pronouncements to date given me confidence that he's a politician poised for all people.
Has he nothing to say about the early morning Muslim call to prayer (Adhan) disrupting the sleep of keyworkers in Leicester? Would he defend the promotion of Zakat (charities for Muslims only), using Council-owned lampposts, along the length and breadth of Mile End Road? Does he not recognise as valid that many people are affronted by having their neighbourhoods increasingly populated by women in burkas?
I despise the medieval expression of patriarchy which the burka represents in modern Britain, and find it deeply antithetical to our values. Mothin, by contrast, remains silent on these matters.
To do otherwise, he would need to park his faith when doing politics and prioritise liberalism over religion. It seems that liberalism for Lefties is a one-way street with all the rights but none of the obligations.
