Greens internal drama warms up

[fromorbit]

New long article looking at the drama inside the Greens over biology suddenly existing again despite their best efforts.

How the Green Party forgot the environment and was torn apart by trans rows
It was a party united by a single mission – to save the planet. But now the gender identity debate has left it divided and in chaos

https://archive.is/TOlNx

The article is already out of date as Zack Polanski of hypnotic breasts fame has just launched a leadership bid against Deyner and Ramsey.

Emma Bateman
It's no secret that big boobs Polanski wants the top job. He is a student politics slogan churner, a self server who distains women and wants misgendering misdemeanours to be grounds for expulsion from the Greens.
He is "LGB with the T"
Still NO DEBATE!

Pro-women Greens article on his background:;
https://concernedgreens.uk/watchlist/zack-polanski/

The existence of biology is likely to be a significant part of the leadership contest for sure so interesting to watch .

Ali Shahrar has launched another legal challenge against the Greens. Gardening needed.

May 27th is the date for Emma Bateman's legal hearing against the Greens.

On May 27th I am in court against Green Party in a case which will expose the contorted lengths the Greens go to in order to shut women up.

It isn't going to go well for the Greens given the Supreme Court ruling. This could be key moment in seeing the ruling's effect on politics and directly impact the leadership contest. It will also be probably be infuriating and hilarious in equal measure.

100%.

Most Green voters are ticking the box for 'environment', and have absolutely zero idea of the internal politics going on, never attend conference, barely pay attention to whomever is current leader. What was the voting turnout for leadership election? Super low compared to other parties, iirc.

I do think that the general approach of Green parties may be unsuited to politics in some ways.

By which I mean people who are interested in respectful, measured, thoughtful discussion based on evidence and long term considerations are not going to necessarily get very far when we have a democratic system that is ultimately all about populism.

...continually re-framing questions to suit the script he has practised. But I guess this is what all career politicians do.
The most blatant was Clegg, who used to preface his response with the question he would have liked to have been asked, which he then answered!

I assume at this point that every politician reflexively evades answering any direct question. It seems to be a thing.

Green and whole, straight off the plant. I've not got large numbers, so was just snacking on odd ones as they occurred.

However good Hypno Boobs is at ducking issues he is still going to get in trouble if he keeps doing crazy things.

ZP being interviewed by Cathy Newman and becomes a bit unstuck. He can't say that GWD are thrown out for what they think. So he has to say it is behaviour but can't define it. Which opens him to other legal trouble.

Emma Bateman
https://x.com/EmmaBatemanGPW/status/1974375561087918411

ZackPolanski claims that Green Women's Declaration were banned from
TheGreenParty
conference for our behaviour. But can't say who he means or what the behaviour was. He made a political decision to prevent women talking about women's rights. Not very progressive, Zack

SEEN in Journalism

Zack Polanski tries to avoid a ‘Forstater’ legal action by saying Green Party Women’s Declaration were not banned for ‘beliefs’: but he dives into defamation waters when he suggests it’s because of transphobic behaviour.

Letting yourself be unrehearsed is a problem for career politicians because it makes them look gaffe prone. But it can be a big asset if you're positioning yourself as a rebel.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a bit of a lightbulb moment after last year's US elections where she noticed a lot of her Bronx constituents voted to send her back to Congress and also for Trump as president. She took to her social media to ask them why, and the response was really interesting. They said, we like him for the same reasons we like you. That had very little to do with policy and a lot to do with personality, style and vibes. AOC and Trump were both seen as straight-talking outsiders willing to take on the establishment.

This doesn't make sense to people with a strongly ideological view of politics, but it makes more sense if you listen to people who aren't politics nerds and rely much more on vibes. I know people who have a soft spot for both Corbyn and Farage, though they're on the opposite side of almost every issue, because they're seen as genuine guys who speak from the heart, and once again who aren't part of the failing establishment.

I can understand GP members voting for Polanski as the high-risk high-reward option who just might give them a dramatic boost instead of steady incremental growth. But I think the problem with Polanski is that he's crafted this rebel/outsider persona, but still has all these career politician traits, and eventually the tension between them will be obvious. I don't think he's authentic enough, and I don't think he can keep up the act forever.

No. Rising to the top of a small political party is probably relatively easy, especially if one is prepared to say whatever it takes to win votes. Actually leading one will be a whole differemt kettle of fish.

As that DM article said, the scrutiny and pressure will increase exponentially, and so much of Polanski's persona is frankly nonsenseballs, I'm not sure how long it can last. So many irreconcileable competing factions and threats. So much contradictory bullshit to maintain.

Well. We'll see. It wont matter who leads the GP if the party is bankrupted.

@ArabellaScott I'm rapidly reaching the point of thinking it would be the best if Hypnoboobs were to bankrupt GPEW before he and the bands of transactivists and social justice warriors who have hijacked the party further distort the definition and damage the reputation of green political ideas.

@SionnachRuadh Your point about most voters not voting on the basis of a party's detailed policy agenda goes double for minor parties contesting unwinnable seats in an FPTP election. Most Green voters neither know nor care about the specifics of policy: they vote Green to send a message to the mainstream parties that they want the climate crisis and/or the biodiversity crisis to be taken seriously.

It’ll be interesting to see how many of those voters peel away if the party becomes known for TQIA+ antics and an uncosted, unfeasible social justice agenda. I know a lot of scientists who won't vote Green again if they think their vote signals support for the Hypnoboobs agenda and wouldn't dream of risking installing him in no. 10.

(I think that at some point, which may already have been reached, Farage becomes a drag on electoral support for Reform because people don't regard him as a credible candidate for PM, to represent the country on the international stage.)

@NasturtiumsAreUnderrated I'll try not to derail too much onto Reform, but I'm aware of the discussions that are happening there, and it's an interesting compare and contrast.

The thing about Farage is that he's got a section of voters who are very loyal to him personally, but he's still fairly divisive. This is why Dom Cummings used to argue that a Farage led vehicle had a hard ceiling of about 15%. With Reform currently pushing 35% I don't think that applies any more.

But the party being a personality-driven one man band is a problem. I don't think the question is so much could Farage be PM (look at the PMs we've had recently) but more who could he put in his cabinet? Does he have halfway credible people around him? So there's a conscious strategy of shifting more to a team image, giving lots of media prominence to figures like Tice and Zia Yusuf and Andrea Jenkyns and Sarah Pochin. They aren't there yet but they're trying to get there over the next couple of years.

I think the Green leadership problem comes from the opposite angle - GP voters vote for the GP brand and are often only vaguely aware of who the party leaders are. But Polanski explicitly wants to have a more presidential style, which doesn't just mean more scrutiny on him, it also means that as the party polls higher and attracts more attention he'll need to have a team of credible surrogates around him. And I think that will be a problem given that most of the well known GP personalities didn't vote for him. Either he's going to have to be very diplomatic and get the sceptics on side, or it's just going to be him and Matt Zarb-Cousin, and I wouldn't want to rely on Matt.

I don't know Polanski, and maybe he's capable of looking at his weaknesses and working out a strategy, but I suspect he's just as likely of trying to bluff his way through and rely on his force of personality and communication skills to make things go his way. There's a touch of the Boris Johnson in him.

Really interesting post.

Green party membership now larger than that of the Lib Dems

news.sky.com/story/green-party-membership-overtakes-liberal-democrats-under-polanski-13444030

We know that membership doesn't necessarily translate into winning elections (see labour under Corbyn) but if I were labour id be seriously worried about Zak. He's saying all the things many disaffected labour supporters want to hear

and as a GC woman I'm worried about Zak as he's clearly a full on TWAW fuck off women type of green - abd he's the leader so I guess women are screwed if they get anywhere near power

see Bristol council for example

Well he says he's a full on TWAW type but given his past form of saying everything that groups want to hear he's likely to pivot if say the Mothin Ali Gaza orientated joiners decide they won't support it

Bluntly I don't think there's anywhere near enough of them to outweigh the middle class be kinders guardian reading activist types that populate the Green Party in droves

The Green Party are going to need the subs to pay for the court cases they're going to lose.

I was a Green Party member for about 30 years, and I was active around LGB stuff as well as at a local level, but I can’t bear to give them my money anymore and I left a couple of years ago.

I’ve seen so many people on social media saying that they think Zack’s speech was amazing and they’ve joined the Green party, but I just find him really creepy and self-promoting; I don’t understand why other people don’t see that. I have seen a couple of other comments though to say that he barely mentioned the climate crisis. I can’t imagine ever going back to the Greens, though it was a big part of my life at one point, I’m still politically homeless.

I wonder if George Monbiot is a fan. He was on R4 Any Questions last Friday and managed to get a round of applause every time he spoke. I realise his nickname is moonbat (I still remember him musing on banning spectator sports because of the carbon footprint except for frisbee because it's inclusive for dogs), but he is capable of nuanced arguments and realising that there are trade offs and Difficulties in some net zero goals and aims

This should answer your question @Lalgarh

Geezo. What a plank.

Haha oh dear. I feel you might get your heart broken George

I think if you read through this thread you will see that just on the issue of sex/gender alone Zack while good at messaging is evasive and ducks the issues. He at time contradicts the wider TA line to make a short term point.

Look how he was flustered by Cathy Newman as shown just above to some degree. I think this could be a huge weakness for him. Right now the media has given him an easy ride on this. I don't think anyone has asked him what his positions on sports are for example. On prisons he has already endorsed the hugely unpopular criminal men in dresses should be in women's prisons idea. Even Sturgeon refuses to say that out right any more.

Polanski is a capable politician. You can see that from his performance in the election. He does have charisma, but I am not sure it has the depth of a Blair or a Boris. I think his appeal maybe rather limited outside left/liberal circles. He may prove me wrong though the elections in May are huge with Wales on the line and thousands of council seats in England it will be the test. Polanski is going to be campaigning hard.

Polanski juggling sex/gender, Gaza, Global warming, taxing the rich and wanting more immigration while doing populist campaigning to be the best at getting your bins collected is going to be interesting to see. Will it deliver over the more traditional Green approach?

Hypnoboobs is not, of course, the first or only person to talk about a form of eco-populism. Plenty of greens would dispute his claim to the 'eco' bit and others reckon he's not credible as a populist.

Joseph Gelfer has his own definition and thinks ZP is cosplaying.

Rupert Read (how the hell he's still in GPEW is a mystery to me, he was questioning trans ideology back in 2013 and has been through re-education at least twice) has a whole argument about radical and moderate flanks - if anyone is interested I will post links - which seems to have led to the Climate Majority Project. He noted that ZP isn't much for talking about climate or biodiversity and appears to be completely incapable of making the basic green arguments that linking them to the concerns of the average voter.

For what very little it's worth I think that the whole project of trying to find a green figure who can match Farage's popular appeal and demagoguery as a route to transformational action on the climate and biodiversity crises is misconceived. But that's another argument.

I'm not sure that he's either eco or populist, but I think - apart from being driven by a galaxy sized ego - he's got a vision that might be workable.

I'm thinking of what Ed Davey is up to. Ed Davey is a ridiculous man in some ways, but he's not a stupid man. He's intuited that the two big historic parties, on which the Lib Dems have long been parasitic, are in possibly terminal decline; Reform are likely to form the next government; and if he corners the market in being the anti-Farage then he's got a good chance of growing the party and maybe being Leader of the Opposition.

This might turn out to be a massive miscalculation like the last time the Lib Dems had a rush of blood to the head and thought they could make Jo Swinson PM (possibly relevant to ZP, the activists loved Swinson and assumed the voters would love her too) but there's a reasonable chance it might work out.

So I think ZP is making a similar but not identical calculation - that there's a chunk of voters on the left who are highly alienated from Labour, and if he corners the Omnicause vote he'll grow the party. And even if polling shows the lefty Omnicause voters are about 15% of the electorate, that's still growing the party quite a bit. The target of 30-40 MPs is ambitious but in a volatile electorate it's not incredible.

So he's very energetic, he's got a certain charisma and he's a very good communicator. And he's got at least the outlines of an electoral strategy. But he's not really in tune with the historic Green brand, he doesn't seem to have thought much about what eco-populism might mean beyond Omnicause politics delivered down a megaphone, and he's heavily reliant on Corbyn not getting the New Party off the ground.

I can understand GPEW members in the current climate saying, we've been doing slow and steady wins the race for years, let's take a punt on a more ambitious approach. But I think it's quite possible they'll wake up with a massive hangover.

Just on the 30-40 target, Electoral Calculus currently has a median prediction of 6 Green seats (the existing four plus Bristol East and Manchester Rusholme), but the range is interesting - they give a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 28. So in purely mathematical terms a smallish boost in the party's vote share could make a qualitative difference in parliamentary representation.

Maths isn't everything though, and the question is whether this would be a recognisable Green Party or just Zack's excellent adventure.