Sexism/other issues in the Green party England & Wales - Discussion Thread 2

[fromorbit]

Zack Polanski is making things bigger again.

We need a new thread to discuss all his antics and the ongoing situation in the Green party which is getting more ever more bizarre. While it is getting ever strident in denying biology it also has Mothin Ali as deputy Leader who clearly doesn't believe in trans thinking, but cleverly sidesteps round talking about it.

The fight back from Green Women's Declaration,(https://www.greenwomensdeclaration.uk/ ) continues and the court cases against GPEW from Emma Bateman and Shahrar Ali are developing.

In Bristol the Women of Wessex are causing panic amongst the ruling Green council just by turning up and asking questions. This may result in another court case.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5455053-bristol-council-is-about-to-be-sued

With local elections in May and elections in Wales incoming lots more to discuss and call out.

First thread - where you can follow the rise of Hypno Boobs:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5328986-greens-internal-drama-warms-up

Note the Scottish Greens which are a separate party to the Green Party England/Wales have their own thread for all their drama. They split off because GPEW didn't hate biology enough at the time.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5313420-scottish-greens-being-sexist-again?page=1

I think Salma Yaqoob is still in Your Party but I can't remember what faction she's in. Possibly GC but not Corbyn but agnostic Sultana

I was a member of the GPEW while Polanski was working his way up. I mostly remember him for being an absolutely nasty two faced bastard.

Echoes of Sturgeon, in fact. He's cultivated a Smiling Messiah persona, the reality is sheer ego and power-hungry drive.

I find this info entirely unsurprising.

Is Windy officially a green? "The greens could have worked with Burnham but NOT Starmer"

https://nitter.net/IndiaWilloughby/status/2015436702853018086#m

So going to be very interesting if Greens run a white woman who thinks biology is complicated.

Go on greens pick windy pick windy pick windy

@SionnachRuadh So it seems they'll [GPEW] be running a Galloway-lite campaign. It might even work, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to green politics.
Doesn't bear any resemblance. This is what still upsets me. My politics have been green my entire life and I've got no-one to vote for. Between the leftish enthusiasm for gender ideology (or - at best - casual indifference to women's rights) and the Greens morphing into being just another leftie party (I'm fed up of explaining the difference between green politics and socialism) with added anti-semitism I've disengaged more or less completely. I'm aiming for blissful ignorance by the next GE.

Is it really too much to ask for to have a party that takes the climate and biodiversity crises seriously, recognises that sex, not 'gender identity', matters and acknowledges that it's daft not to be part of a European economic bloc? That's a pretty minimalist set of criteria. It's about as centrist as you can get, in the sense that few reasonable people would disagree with any of the three.

I hear you, Nasturtiums.

Those claiming that there's anything even vaguely close to equivalence between the threats of the far right and the Islamist threat, really needed to go to Specsavers.

Now, stop causing trouble for these politicians. They have enough of a hard time mentally justifying these batshit insane positions without being questioned over them. That just won't do.

I was looking for a pithy description of Polanski, but none were quite hitting the mark.
"Absolutely nasty two faced bastard" fits the bill perfectly, cheers!

Aren't they picking someone called Hannah, boilerplate TWAW/Omnicause, not someone who you could rely on to help sort a typical constituency issue, but great at whipping up the hate at a LWS meet.

I agree with everything you say. I feel exactly the same. I have voted Green, I like the Green party members I have met (most of whom have been long term environmentalist Greens). I might still vote for them in the Local elections as they seem to at least give a damn about the environment-although looking at how much the Greens have done in Brighton for environmentalism I may think again- but no way would I risk a Labour/Green coalition in the General election. They have turned into a Hard Left party full of opportunists- whether that is people obsessed with Gaza or people obsessed with TWAW, neither of them give a toss about the environment. It is so ridiculous that no one is seeing the massive gap there is in the market. The Lib Dems could easily got into that gap if they bothered campaigning and said they were going to adhere to the law on single sex spaces. I suspect what will happen is a revival of the Tory Party, so any Centre Left party will lose their momentum because they are too scared to stand up to the Trans activist/Gaza bullies.

You’ve made me want to read his books now! 😂

I lolled at this:

Green Party leader Zack Polanski said: "It tells you everything you need to know that Reform are parachuting in a rent-an-extremist... Manchester will show him the door."

if Mothin Ali does stand for the Greens as their rent-an-extremist (of which they have many) he’ll look a bit silly.

In 2024, I voted Green for the first time (as a Tory, the local Tory candidate made it impossible for me to support my usual clan).
At the local husting, the Green candidate basically made a GC pitch, and opined for free speech to be protected. At that moment, my vote switched to her.
What happened after the GE (she came a very creditable fourth).
The Green Party got wind of her words, she was put on indefinite suspension, told to not represent the party formally or informally, to stay away from events.
She was shunned by colleagues and friends (now former friends).
At a party, she had people talking behind her back.
Even now, 18 months on, she's not been told what the charge is, whom her accuser is, she has to wait an indefinite time for official action against her.
Simply for saying in public that she knows the difference between men and women, policy must flow from this, the medicalisation of youth is a huge problem, and she's sad to see that cancel culture has forced a freeze on the free discussion needed in this area.
And for these "sins", she's treated like the shit on people's shoes.
My discussions with her have been a total eye-opener to the absolute cult that the modern Green Party has become, likely endemic in Labour, LDs, SNP, YP, far left parties.

I imagine he’s about as Green as Polanski and many of the current prominent activists.

I'm trying to work out who this is. I'm still in the Green Party (though, I do sometimes ask myself why, considering the current state of GPEW) and sadly it could describe a few women.
Do you know if she has local support or is in touch with Green Women's Declaration?

Not everyone in the Green Party is against NATO.

At the 2023 Spring Conference, changed its long standing policy to leave NATO and voted for a motion that says, “NATO has an important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their security”. Support for the motion was probably due to support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

@RainbowBagels
My voting strategy was the other way round. I haven't voted Green in local elections for a long time, because there's a small risk my vote would actually help elect a Green councillor who could then wreak havoc with domestic abuse services (the fight to keep non-transidentifying men out of women's group support in my area was warning enough), teaching about sex in schools (and policies on toilets and social transitioning) and conditionality of funding for various community groups. I didn't stop voting Green nationally until 2017, because I saw a GPEW vote in a GE as a signal that I wanted serious action on climate and biodiversity and there was no risk that the GPEW candidate would actually win. Since 2017 I've been spoiling my ballot.

I'm now in the bittersweet position of having convinced a couple of people that the gravity of the climate and biodiversity crises warrants a green (lower case is deliberate) vote: they voted Green in 2024 when I did not. They share my gender-critical position, but it isn't a red line for them.

I was responding more with regards to the YP /Zahra Sultana group ( I know this is the Green Party thread)
I do wonder though, whether that motion would be passed again today. The Greens have had the same issue as Labour had with their £3 membership fee. They have been taken over by entryists since 2024. I cant remember the last time the spoke about any environmental issues.

I'm not going to ID her, for obvious reasons. Only in sporadic contact with her now. No idea if she is in contact with those people.
I'd always wondered if cancel culture was a moral panic, invented by the alt media.
Here it's presented to me as a hard cold fact, a real McCarthyism for the modern age.
What is so sad is she's really lost her love for the party she's always been a part of, and she's truly confused as to how many people she was friendly and collegiate with have not just dropped her, but don't even acknowledge her existence.
I can't quite imagine how that must feel.
Luckily she's a very strong individual with a close family and other community ties, she just isn't a Green Party person anymore.

@NasturtiumsAreUnderrated Good points actually. It is so frustrating for people who have always been politically active to suddenly be in a position where there is no one that we can, in good conscience, vote for.

You're right about entryism. First it was the TRAs and then Islamists and Greens Organise (the Green Party equivalent of Militant Tendency or Momentum in the Labour Party).
I think that many - if not most - of the new joiners are likely to be anti-NATO.

Very sensible not to ID her publicly. I'm glad to hear that she has other support. I'd just wondered because some of my GC Green WhatsApp groups are a mixture of people in the party, people who have been suspended and people who have been expelled or have resigned (mostly women, of course). We all find the support network really important.
I know that Green Women's Declaration and Green Party Women have also supported women who have been bullied for their views. I was just wondering whether she was feeling isolated and had any support. It's good that she has - although sad that it's not from within the Green Party.

Wish I could say. We're not that close, my info based on one long chat with her. I think for her the party is over, metaphorically and literally.
And she's not the type you just find anywhere, very respected locally incl councillors from other parties, not a bad word said against her.
I recall at the husting, as the LGBTQ question came up, platitudes on be nice and don't judge from everyone, as she alone went counter to this, and said enough was enough, there was a hush in the room, as if everyone realized that a public figure hadcsaid something publicly, and wrongspeak to boot.
Then, guess what? A spontaneous warm round of applause from pretty much the whole room of 200-300 people. Not a single voice in dissent.
And I switched my vote there and then.
Not in my wildest fantasies of cancel culture would I have guessed that was it for her.
But that's how it turned out.
"The party told her to reject the evidence of her eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command".

It's so sad that good people like this are being treated by the Party and it makes me very angry to see the people who do the bullying being lauded and rising within the Party.