Sexism/other issues in the Green party England & Wales - Discussion Thread 3

I saw this posted on AiBU. This is the first time I've actually read the infamous Sun article. Fucking hell 😳

https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/798031/can-you-really-think-your-boobs-bigger/

(I'm sorry I don't know how to archive it)
Zack Polanski is a joke that isn’t funny anymore - spiked

"Plus, it would require admitting that much of this Jew hatred is coming from Muslim communities, which the Greens are desperate to court in our more ‘diverse’ cities. Political calculation meets moral cowardice."

This article is brilliant, hilarious and I suspect very accurate! Thanks for linking to it.

"...ending discrimination against Deliveroo drivers..."
...what, you mean citizens who can't be arsed to go out and get their Bargain Buckets and Pizza stacks, and request home delivery up and down the country, are abusing these drivers on grabbing the food off them?
Or does he mean any discussion of Deliveroo and other such companies being complicit in grey market labour scams is anti-migrant?

Maddie Grant is having altogether too much fun
Mockery is the best way to engage with Zack Polanski | The Spectator

If James "I have never held an unconventional opinion in my life" Ball is writing a hit piece, that probably means the chattering class is going off Zack.

Summary of the general ick factor

https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-we-need-to-talk-about-zack-polanski/?utmsource=1234572&utmcampaign=9a4f4571-331d-4ae9-908c-7ae495d5d828

Particularly that he only really left the Lib Dems who were shoulder to shoulder with the Tories on austerity because of them not giving him a parliamentary candidacy rather than the austerity he cited.

Though many will have already voted Green by post, Luke Tryl from pollsters More In Common says the past few days have been deeply damaging for Polanski’s personal popularity. On May 5, he wrote: “Zack Polanski’s net approval rating has fallen by a fairly chunky 14 points over the last week. Still far ahead of Starmer but also puts him now well below the top three of Badenoch, Davey and Farage.”

Then he traumatised himself for nothing

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/polanski-police-golders-green-video-met-police-b2971310.html

Has anyone done anything with that green screen Zack's been pictured in?

Very impressive showing from Kemi B standing up for Jewish people in the UK below:

Moment Kemi Badenoch defends British Jews against heckler in Essex | LBC

😂😂 Very funny.

The Greens and Labour need to watch out because being funny is definitely something people like. In general their candidates seem to be extremely unfunny. Can anyone name a funny Green or Labour politician?

I do get to vote tomorrow, it's probably going to be Conservative based on two things, firstly Lib Dems have a policy which basically says they're happy to lock women in with male murderers and paedophiles so they're out. It's abhorrent (it's like intentionally locking a fox in a cage with hens and then saying 'risk assessment blah blah, but he identifies as a hen' when the fox eats the hens which is obviously going to happen.... I just don't see the difference).

Secondly only Conservatives and Reform have mentioned actual policies in any documentation and only the Conservative has any clue, seemingly, what is actually going on in the local area and what the main issues are. He's obviously been listening.

I also like Kemi B, so it's an easy choice in the end. If I really thought Reform might get some Lib Dems out then I might vote for them.

The Lib Dems have also been shit at a local level, prioritising luxury plans that benefit a small minority who live in just one area (unsurprisingly where one of their main council leaders lives) over the basics like road maintenance for years. It's all very dodgy looking from the outside, no accountability though, seemingly.

Frothing at the mouth indeed, didn't the leftie press make a big, big deal over something Farage said when he was a kid at school. 😂

"... they're protected by the oligarchs they serve," 😂 because the left are all independent thinkers and not at all funded by hedge fund manager George Soros and his spawn though Open Society. 🤯

They're really going big on newspaper cartoonists at the moment, I assume to distract from what their own candidates have been saying online.

I mean on the one hand, the British tradition of caricature is based on exaggerating features (Denis Healey's eyebrows, John Major's upper lip, Gordon Brown's resting scowling face) and Zack does not exactly look identikit. He's a gift to the cartoonist who's been struggling to think of interesting ways of drawing Steve Reed or Alex Burghart.

On the other hand I don't think it's completely unreasonable to be uncomfortable when it's minority politicians - cartoonists routinely tone down Kemi Badenoch's African features and I assume that's why.

In terms of Jewish politicians, I'll just note that the Owen Joneses of this world complained loudly when Ed Miliband was being caricatured, but not when it was Michael Howard.

The silliest version of this was Zarah Sultana complaining about being drawn as a brown woman (should they have drawn her as a white woman?)

Wtf is Skywriter. Is it like a Bluesky for people who find it intolerably right wing? Monbiot still on the #bekind Polanski train

https://skywriter.blue/@georgemonbiot.bsky.social/3ml64fptye22q

Some of the charges are so petty and tenuous that if they were levelled at anyone else, the shame would land on the reporters, not their targets. But with leftwing politicians, anything goes.

Meanwhile he's frothing about a cartoon of zp as slimer from Ghostbusters as anti Semitic

Gotta say, you may not agree with Zia Yusuf on much, but he's about the most entertaining person in UK politics right now

Like so many on here I’m a politically homeless leftie. No election in my area tomorrow but I was musing on who I’d vote for if there was a GE on Thursday. Our current MP is Labour, from the area, lives in the constituency, sensible and moderate, and responsive to constituents. Ticks all my boxes on what I’d want for an MP, except for the national state of Labour. Sadly under threat from the Reform vote at the next election.

Looking at the national levels of all the parties, the only one that sounds sensible on anything at the moment is the conservatives. And I increasingly like Kemi. I’ve always thought it will have to be a cold day in hell for me to put a cross in a box against the Tory party, but now it’s looking more like “never say never”.

I strongly suspect that at the next election it will be a Green v Reform in my constituency. I’ve voted tactically in the past when living elsewhere (lib dems) but never had the situation where it’s anyone but the two leading candidates.

I've just seen that if you go to your 'account' details there is a listing for 'Bonus Accounts' you seem to be able to share from there.

But I'll also give your method a go......thanks!

The Green Party is so far from what it was when I originally joined, decades ago, that I now have a positive aversion to it.

Choose to share by email then copy the link from the draft email to paste is the only way it works for me! Apols any typos on train 🚂

Thanks! I have a subscription but can't seem to get the share token to work. how do you do it?

Share token

https://www.thetimes.com/article/5a0e4c8c-5d3a-47d9-b60b-4a245bad292b?shareToken=4105a11619f3eb576d88d50b32d759da&ver=article

One of the best things Robert Crampton has written IMO.

I knew Robert back in the day when I was helping to set up, and living at, a peace camp outside of an American base in High Wycombe, in the early 1980s. He used to visit regularly ( wearing his red and white shemag/keffiyeh). Comes from a solidly Labour activist family in Hull, but now living in Hackney, which the Greens have a chance of taking on Thursday.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/local-election-results-uk-2026-jewish-antisemitism-farage-polanski-pzqnqq2m0

It's so clear he's a grifter. Anyone believing anything he says or any promises he makes at this point must have their head in the sand.

.... through identity politics rather than class

I would say identity politics is all class, it's only the affluent and idle rich classes that are buying into it. Those who have nothing better to do with their time than cosplay revolutionaries on the one side and grievance politics on the other. The Green's are manipulating jealousy and resentment, telling the Big Lies in order to get people to vote for them, they don't care about the problems ethnic communities have, they just using them to get power.

It will bite them on the arse because it's been done before and those that end up in power afterward always turn on those they used to get it.

If only they had paid attention to history before they rewrote it. 😱
Stupid fuckers.

The times interview with him notes he's the first party leader to forged their leadership through identity politics rather than class

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/zack-polanski-i-want-to-talk-to-people-who-disagree-with-me-z9tt7shkj

I’m enjoying the interview but simultaneously appalled that this man and his party will have an increasing role in British politics. It feels to me as though he’ll say anything in an interview including the opposite of what he’s previously said. And I can’t help but believe that he says things without meaning any of it. A Schrödinger politican. So slippery. Feels like an even more marked opportunistic power grab than the typical politician.