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

Remember, this is all PRE Polanski.
Can you imagine this now turned up to Eleven?

Between a Labour/Green coalition and a Reform/Tory one, its looking pretty bleak tbh.

And the Libdems have revealed themselves to be, overall, jaw droppingly insane. 😭

Actually, the external comms have got worse with Polanski's batshit, off the cuff announcements but it hasn't got worse internally (to be fair, it's been so bad that it couldn't have got much worse).

Some members who were given a 5 year expulsion for something called a 4.7 offence, have actually had that reduced to 1 year and then been readmitted to the party because they had been expelled for over a year. 2 of these women were then co-opted onto the Green Party Women committee which must have pissed off the TRAs who complained about them in the first place.

Why would you rejoin? I mean, seriously. No matter how much you're allied to the cause, there are so many other ways to make a difference re local conservation. Why fold back into effectively a McCarthy type organisation?

Because a lot of these women (and men) have put their lives into the party, and know that there are a lot of good people still in it. It must be galling to see a party that has been laboriously built up over years getting taken over and changed unrecognisably.

And in ways that are counter to its founding principles, I should add. See also Robin Harper etc

I opted to put my energy into pursuing green objectives via other routes, but although I've leafleted for the Greens, I've never actually been a member. Political activity isn't my forte, so not being able to vote constructively has actually been positive, in that it nudged me into using the skills I have to make a difference in other ways.

To be honest, I have some sympathy with the argument that nothing will push humanity into acting on climate and biodiversity with the urgency and single-minded focus required (think of the way in which the UK - belatedly - redirected its entire economy to fight WW2: all society was involved, people accepted lifestyle change and widespread social reorganisation) to avert catastrophe and avoid really drastic lifestyle change. The corollary is that I've started to think slightly differently about what the priorities should be.

Maybe its time for a fresh start. I've had to rethink a lot of beliefs that the GP still cleave to. Nuclear power and nuclear weapons being two.

Update selection meeting

GORTON & DENTON Greens: Hannah Spencer got 457 votes to 65 for Fesl Raza-Khan and 63 for Sarah Wakefield.

Note this info on the Green candidate was leaked for Gorton & Denton by-election, before it was supposed to be. Bad comms.

Mothin clearly saw writing on wall decided not to stand,

The fact Spencer is a plumber and training in plastering may prove a factor in actual election.

Fesl Raza-Khan is a wealthy Muslim recent joiner of Greens, investor landlord? and apparently a former Tory? by one X rumor! Not certain on that but with ex military background makes sense.

Fesl Reza-Khan, 50, jd Greens 2023; stood Oldham E & Saddleworth 2024. Born Pakistan. Army officer, 1996-2000. Owner/CEO, Red Leaf Gp. Programme mgr, Mcr City Cl, 2004-24. Co-founded Muslim Greens. Green Party Executive Green Party International Coordinator. Wife is actress Armeena Rana Khan.

Interviews
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-gorton-and-denton-by-election-meet-frontrunners-green-party-candidate

Fesl Reza-Khan did what Mothin did and omitted to answer questions from the LGBT greens in recent internal green elections.

Wakefield was a local Green ran the Eating Better group, and was also secretary of the students' union at Manchester University around 2010.

Details
https://x.com/tomorrowsmps

The worker party candidate is still under discussion apparently sorry BBC got it wrong. Galloway still may stand over local councilor. Shahbaz Sarwar or two others

Workers Party of Britain to choose from four candidates for by-election
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9dv3x5yep4o?

Obviously sex gender could become an issue you can rely on the WP to bring it up as they see the Greens as wrong as well as being capitalist. Obviously women may ask awkward questions too. So much depends on if local Muslims can support a Green ultra liberal women to stop Reform, or if a bloke from Workers Party seems better or who Labour gets to stand.

This is why I could never vote for a party who tries to destroy honest people, as the Labour party did to Rosie Duffield. Once they go down that route, they cannot be trusted any more.

The complete immersion into gender ideology in the Green party has been going on for a long time though, probably more than eight years, back to the Aimee Challenor's times. I think the Green party could easily be rebranded as the "Pride" party.

Eight years is not that long in this context. People involved have been so for decades.

Love the fact that Hannah Spencer, the Green, is a trainee plasterer, and Matt Goodwin, Reform, is an academic.
Doesn't Matt Goodwin regularly rail against the elite professional classes (of which academics are squarely within) versus the working classes (of which plasterers are a big part)? Lol.

Spiked
Gorton and Denton: one last heave for the Islamo-left alliance?
Islamic sectarianism is already rearing its head in this tightest of by-elections
https://archive.is/c5QUa

It is looking to be a hell of a contest. Hannah left school at 16 to become a plumber. I don't agree with some of her positions, but she seems like a hell of a person and very genuine. So I think that could help her.

Yet her win depends on sectarian voting which undermines the very freedom and independence she has shown.

Goodwin claims to be the first one in his family to attend university, though his dad was a successful senior NHS exec he was brought up by his mum. I guess he probably went to compressive. Look at the start of Uni career.

"Matthew graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics and contemporary history from the University of Salford in 2003 and obtained a Master of Arts degree in political science from the University of Western Ontario in 2004. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree under the supervision of Roger Eatwell at the University of Bath in 2007"

This is not an elite start. He seems to have climbed the academic ladder through hard work.

Goodwin is always complaining about elites, and the prejudice he has faced as a lower class academic. As anyone knows in Academia middle class and Oxbridge types always do well and 100% he would face prejudice. Goodwin originally started as a bit of a lefty who criticised the right, then changed over time. He sees a big issue as the domination of education and media a liberal woke elite who impose damaging ideas on people about race, gender, religion etc.

I think the evidence we see on this board shows he sees part of the problem. There is an intolerant group of ideologues who put ideas over safety of women, often working classwomen. Obviously there may be disagreement over his positions on other things

It is looking to be a hell of a contest. Hannah left school at 16 to become a plumber. I don't agree with some of her positions, but she seems like a hell of a person and very genuine. So I think that could help her.

And that's the problem feminists have, right there. Gender ideology is low salience for most people and not a vote-switching issue for most people who agree with all or most of the gender critical position.

I was/am in touch (online) with some political activists (Lab and ex-Lab Greens): without exception they regard any mention of sex-based ights or the definition of a woman as markers of bigoted culture warriordom and dismiss such female voters out of hand. It's quite chilling - I used to think I was broadly on the same side as some of these people - can't even bring myself to claim that I'm broadly on the left any more.

How do feminists persuade enough people that sex-based rights are worth making a fuss about and thus put a stop to the gender ideologues' claim that most people support 'letting people "just" be themselves' and that anyone who doesn't is just a bigot on the wrong side of history?

I've had an eye on Goodwin since his first book. There was a hit piece on him last year, written by James Ball for the New European. Ball seems to have spoken to every academic who dislikes Goodwin, and it was unintentionally revealing. People were saying things like "he pretended to be a lefty, but we always knew his politics were basically working class Tory".

It gives a picture of Goodwin putting noses out of joint simply by being a young man in a hurry, coming from a non-elite background, working his way up the ladder and achieving a celebrity that very few political science academics achieve. Even if he was tailoring his opinions to what was acceptable in his working environment, they still knew that he wasn't one of us, and I think on that basis his post-Brexit stance made him a target in a way that he wouldn't have been if he had a public school and Oxbridge background. The whole article just stank of "who does this ghastly oik think he is?"

And of course, when people are subject to cancellation attempts they often radicalise.

It was academics at Canterbury who were going after him. I wonder if there was an overlap with the university based Corbynites in Canterbury CLP who went after Rosie Duffield.

I've mentioned on here the local Green who's been cancelled by the party for her GC views. What was interesting when I sat down for a coffee with her was the attitude of her (male) friend. He was generally sympathetic to her plight, but hardly sounded that troubled. It was like she'd simply failed a job interview. Sure, women's sex based rights were important, but her fate didn't register beyond a shrug of his shoulders. No way would this be an electoral consideration for him..
I suspect that may be the case more widely.

Jewish News has collated (some of) Hannah Spencer's anti-Semitic social media activity, including a striking example of facing both ways:

Just hours after last year’s Heaton Park Synagogue attack in Manchester, Spencer shared a Green Party post praising the “bravery of the Global Sumud Flotilla puts our cowardly Government to shame.”

Two hours later, at 1:45pm, Spencer then posted on X in response to the deadly Yom Kippur attack that had taken place that morning, writing: “Absolutely devastated for our Jewish community in Crumpsall, and for all of our Jewish communities across Greater Manchester and beyond.
“My thoughts are very much with those killed and injured, and the emergency services who responded. Our city region will always stand together.”

Greens, and lefty social media in general, are going big with the she's a working class plumber and he's a soft southern professor line. They may as well put Hannah in a flat cap.

The fact is that she sits on Trafford council representing Hale, which is one of the richest wards in the whole country. It's hard to think of somewhere more different from the run down estates in Gorton and Denton.

Hannah even got in on the act by tweeting about how Goodwin isn't the kind of person she sees on her big shop in Asda. Hale got its first Asda literally last year.

I remember the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in 2008, when Labour were a very unpopular incumbent government. The Tory candidate Edward Timpson was a barrister from a wealthy family (actually the shoe repair firm, he's the brother of current prisons minister James Timpson). Labour parachuted in Tamsin Dunwoody, daughter of deceased MP Gwyneth Dunwoody.

Labour, for some bizarre reason, decided to run a class-based campaign but did it in a really crap way. They had volunteers wearing top hats to mock Timpson, while pushing their nepo baby candidate (who wasn't exactly working class herself) as "one of us". The volunteers seemed to be having tremendous fun. Working class voters in Crewe thought this was stupid, and showed disrespect to voters concerned about the economy, and elected Timpson.

I don't think the population at large pay that much attention to elites v masses narratives, whether Corbyn's "the few versus the many", Polanski's "rinse the rich" spin, or even Goodwins professional managerial class v powerless citizens.
They're all varying ways of describing class structures.
The politically motivated like us on MN feel these things more deeply, because we are slightly (more than slightly? Lol) obsessive.
How Spencer and Goodwin are able to articulate the nitty gritty of Green and Reform policies to address cost of living, the economy generally, is where the by-election will be won or lost.
Whether Spencer's Omnicause/TRA views, or Goodwins views on "who's really British/English?" views will seriously impinge on how voters interact with them and then vote, I'm not convinced.

We'll see how they do on the doorsteps.

I didn't know she was from Hale though, and that made me smile a bit. If you meet anyone in Hale who comes from a working class background, they're probably a professional footballer.

But Labour think Gary Neville is a proletarian everyman with a deep insight into the working class, so what do I know.

I mean, how would my Qs be answered by Hannah?
Net Zero is crippling industry with the highest industrial electric charges in the world
"Roll it out faster".
Rinsing the billionaires even in a best case scenario raise only part of what we need.
"Like Zack said, we can just print money out of our crisis, and there are plenty of other businesses we can tax".
British people are sick of our porous borders and inability to get illegals off our shores.
"Irregular migrants are people just like Mancunians are, and deserve the happiness and security we want for everyone".
The culture war has gone too far, men allowed into women's spaces, women scared to speak up, cancel culture abounds.
"No-one has the right to misgender anyone, cis male predators are actually the problem, and speech that trans individuals consider harmful should not be encouraged, and I don't see JKR having lost any book contacts".
Would Hannah get my vote?
Well, I'd thank her for speaking frankly, but tell her on this occasion I'd have to pass on lending her my support (I voted Green in 2024).
However I think plenty will be convinced by her pitch.

Urges legalisation of hard drugs, but also claims he's never even drunk alcohol

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/01/zack-polanski-green-party-legalise-drugs-alcohol

It's a bit Having it Both Ways. Iirc greens have long advocated legalisation but as I mentioned before, thinking globally, how would increasing consumption of a cash crop help climate change. And what is the carbon footprint of a gram of cocaine