Well this has terrified me over my breakfast:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/d21dfdab-85e1-460e-a7f4-c4d081681cf8?shareToken=73a25e660307c57cb996bf808e232675&ver=article
Not about Labour, obviously, but if this man ends up being a ‘kingmaker’ in a left wing coalition, we are seriously fucked.
He wants to talk to people who disagree with him unless you support women’s rights or have concerns about immigration, obviously.
"Last year Piers Morgan asked Polanski if a woman can have a penis. “Yes,” he said. Can a woman who disagrees with him and publicly expresses gender-critical views, I ask, be a member of the Green Party?
“Well, I fundamentally disagree with gender-critical views.” He looks annoyed with me. “I see it as my principal job as a leader of a political party to be really clear that the Green Party is a safe space for LGBT people. It is also,” he adds, “a safe space, I believe, for women, and I don’t see these things as being in conflict.”
His tone shortens. “When you look at polling, there’s a very, very small amount of people whose No 1 issue is around reducing the rights of trans people. But I’m not interested in having that conversation.” It sharpens as he says we should “not, frankly, get caught in conversations about culture wars” but “spend a lot more time focusing on what really matters”.
He can’t claim immigration doesn’t matter to people, so I ask what his policy would look like. “The first thing is to recognise the skills gaps we’ve got in this country.” He believes anyone who wants to come here to work and pay tax should be welcomed. He wouldn’t set a limit on the number because “governments have always set arbitrary targets and completely missed them, so it doesn’t make any sense. I also think setting a target accepts the premise that migration is in some way a bad thing.”
The problems facing this country — poverty, a struggling NHS, a lack of council housing — are, he says, “problems of austerity and underinvestment, they’re not problems of migration. There’s lots of evidence to show that someone who comes here to work is more likely to pay more into the system through taxes than they are to take out of welfare.”
Economists debate this endlessly, but very few would endorse literally unlimited immigration — and a net gain or loss to the Treasury isn’t the only question. Is he willing to recognise any conflict whatsoever between modern British values and those that some immigrants bring with them? He looks annoyed again.
“People said these exact same arguments when Jews came here fleeing from the Second World War. They thought that being Jewish wasn’t quite British or that there was something unsightly or unseemly about these people. I’ve not seen any evidence that someone from another country is any more likely to cause any problems than someone who’s from this country.”
The data on comparative sexual offending rates among recent immigrant communities is disputed and inconclusive. What would Polanski say to voters alarmed by recent news reports of rapes committed by asylum seekers? “A woman who is sexually assaulted is much more likely to be abused by a partner, or someone in their own family, than they are by a migrant. Domestic violence and abuse need to be taken really seriously.” "