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

Mothin Ali is no-one you want near any levers of power.
This could be the first electrical test of a genuine post-traditional parties landscape.
Reform v Greens, replacing Tory v Labour.
The significance of this can't be overestimated enough.

In Burnham's absence it could very easily turn into a Caerphilly situation where the traditional parties are just ground into dust.

Of course in Caerphilly, Plaid had the advantage of their candidate being a well-liked local councillor who had been standing for election there for decades. I don't think the Greens have a comparable person in east Manchester.

There are rumours that Zia may be the Reform candidate...

Meanwhile our friend Rosie Duffield gives her view on where things are for Labour.

The Greens have been almost entirely taken over by entryists who see it as a party of easy opportunity. They do not even pretend to give a damn about the environment anymore.

Including Polanski- the arch opportunist.

As someone who is still hanging on in the Green Party to support the good people who are left, I totally agree about the entryism.

First, it was the TRAs. Then it was Greens Organise (Leftists) and the Islamists.

They have tried bullying out GC members and now some Jewish members are getting very worried.

I don't know how things are going to work out with the TRA wing and the Islamist wing. A showdown seems inevitable. It seems to be a question of when rather than if.

Absolutely...
Actor. Hypnotherapist. LD activist. Greens leader.
This is a whole other level of superficial, fake, "so 2026".
I actually see it as flimsy, that modern politics is so lacking in heft that an absolute paper thin individual can become a party leader.
But also as sad and depressing, because at the point in history we really need people of absolute integrity aspiring to office, Polanski signifies a new breed.
His presence absolutely makes Farage as PM more likely.
Too bad about old school pro conservation Greens who likely realized Net Zero Now!, connections to Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action, TRA and the rest of the Omnicause, as alien to a reasonable ecological movement, must be mortified by this prancing man-child.

Worth noting that ZP has stated that the local Green party will decide who they want to stand indeed unlike Labour I am not sure there is mechanism where candidates can be imposed from the top. They can stop candidates from standing though by suspending them as we saw in Sheffield with Alison Teal. So Mothin may be out of the picture unless he can get local support.

It seems the favoured local is Hannah Spencer who has stood before in the area. They are going to do a big push.
Greens launch major push for Gorton and Denton after Burnham blocked

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/26/greens-gorton-and-denton-byelection-fight-andy-burnham-blocked

Spencer is a TA see her answer to this question from recent elections, asked by the TA focused Feminist Male Supremacy Greens:
https://feministgreens.greenparty.org.uk/internal-elections-2025/

Despite the recent regressive and unjust Supreme Court ruling which undermines the rights and dignity of trans people, and the anti-feminist and possibly illegal position taken by the EHRC, Feminist Greens remain committed to the Party’s policy: trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary and gender-diverse people must have their identities and lived realities fully recognised and respected.
We will continue to fight against the ongoing dismantling of LGBTQIA+ rights in society. We resolutely recognise bodily autonomy as a human right for all people of all ages, including the right of an individual to live their life as they know themselves to be, and the right to be fully supported by a desegregated healthcare system free from gatekeeping , LGBTIQA+ conversion therapy abuse practices, and clinical discrimination.
Do you support Feminist Greens’ views on this, and why/why not?
Hannah Spencer I wholeheartedly support this position as my own and I am proud that us as Greens are a place of refuge and solidarity for our LGBTQIA+ siblings. We cannot ever see progress towards an equal world if we watch people’s rights be removed. I believe everyone should be able to live as themselves, in peace and in dignity.
Alongside this, I am appalled at the idea that Trans people in particular hold any responsibility for the real dangers that women and girls live with every day in our society. To see them used as scapegoats in this way is cruel, and also detracts from the actual threat of gender based violence. I always try to use my voice in Council to highlight this and I repeatedly did this during the hustings I attended as part of the campaign for Mayor of Greater Manchester. I will always try and use my platform to call out the politicisation of human beings.

Who ever the Green candidate in Gorton is they have the support of the Muslim Vote group which may be significant with a quarter of population Muslim.

Muslim Voter Group To Endorse Greens In Gorton And Denton By-Election
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/muslim-voter-group-to-endorse-greens-in-gorton-and-denton-by-election

This is the Muslim Vote which believes in this:
Issuance of Department for Education guidance to schools and academies reflecting that cultural and religious sensitivity must be taken into account when discussing LGBT matters, particularly by schools in areas where the majority of the community are from a religious background. This should include proactive and meaningful parental consultation, particularly concerning issues such as the teaching of RSE.

So that completely contrasts with Green policies. Once again the conflict between Muslim ideas and progressive party ones.

In one respect, this Hannah standing in this bye election sounds like a child, just spouting stuff that you might expect from someone too young to have learnt critical thinking skills
On the other hand, kids are great at making big concept jumps, saying wacky things that make their parents ears prick up, even showing up adults sometimes.
Poor Hannah doesn't present with this gift that kids have.
She's just an apparatchik for an ideology that is child like, but with no improvisation or humour.
These people are immature drones.

It’s difficult to tell if Hannah is a bit dim or very disingenuous and knows what she is doing, in that quote.

I think she's part of this burgeoning new cohort, far left radicalised females. Weren't there a lot of women in the 70s who felt a real kinship with Baader Meinhof etc?
Now, by no means am I comparing Polanski's Greens to them, because the violence of the Greens is limited to sitting down on the M25 and throwing soup over a Great Master, whereas the far left movements of the 70s really meant business.
But Polanski's frothy schtick against billionaires, shadowy fossil fuel interests and alt right lobby groups incl anti trans, and anti Zionism, absolutely hits the sweet spot for so many young people, especially women it seems.
Hannah's folklore won't even go as far back as Occupy London, more Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, the tail end of Greta's environmental actions, but particularly The Great Trans Battles, y'know, the ones where all those "women" poured piss everywhere, and shouted their support for calls to "smash a TERFs face in!", dovetailing into the Omnicause.

Workers Party are running Shahbaz Sarwar, who probably won't have the by-election razzmatazz of Galloway, but who is a councillor for the area. I don't know how well he'll do, but the Greens can't rely on just hoovering up Muslim voters disillusioned with Labour.

Dim or disingenuous is the question. A combination of both?

I subscribe to the Carole Cadwalladr substack. She is neither dim nor disingenuous but is apparently susceptible to believing all left politics = progressive = good. Still, it was incredibly disappointing to read her description of ZP as a "rising star in progressive politics".

Made me think of how messy the political left has become. A large proportion now appears to be based on knee jerk support for the ‘underdog’, any perceived underdog including the Trans movt, Palestine Action, the renter etc. Without thinking through the nuances and details of these issues or their wider implications. As if protest has become the main objective regardless of the cause of the protest. Maybe it’s the dopamine hit of righteous rage.

Speaking of dim vs disingenuous, I had thought of voting labour in the next election to keep Reform out, but Nadia Whittome on R4 yesterday convinced me otherwise. Going on about the Labour Party vs the party leadership. Her seething righteousness made me realise it’s the sanctimonious, attention seeking backbenchers that have the power in that party, not the cabinet.

Not to be depressing, but overall, are we doomed? We have a steadily worsening economy and increasingly polarised politics with both left and right moving further away from the centre. And is a centrist government no longer possible because of the intractable problems of our late capitalist system built on extraction and consumption?

Fascinating how voting is becoming more and more sectarian, more tactical, less "who do I support and vote for" and more "whomever best placed to stop the ones I hate most will get my vote", and single issue stuff.
How any electoral psephologist is able to pull apart these conflicting counter intuitive currents to accurately read the election tea leaves is beyond me.

Speaking of dim vs disingenuous, I had thought of voting labour in the next election to keep Reform out, but Nadia Whittome on R4 yesterday convinced me otherwise. Going on about the Labour Party vs the party leadership. Her seething righteousness made me realise it’s the sanctimonious, attention seeking backbenchers that have the power in that party, not the cabinet.

Yes she was fretting about the near certainty that Starmer Would Fail and a Farage government would get in, which she seems to have convinced herself can only be stopped by Burnham standing in Gorton. Let alone if he actually loses there. Or if he makes it as a backbencher, then has to vacate the mayoralty, prompting an election, that would not necessarily be won by Labour, especially given that Manchester voters will have been told in essence that he was marking time in the post they voted him in for.

So you'd get a labour backbencher but the possibility of another Reform mayor. This time of a major metropolitan area. It's not exactly Seeing The Bigger Picture is it Nadia

Oh she was actually idiotic. Party before people for Nadia.

More specifically, that loud party going on between her ears.

Increasingly, these allied groups are prepared to use violence, though, as we have seen with Palestine Action activists smashing their way in to facilities and assaulting police officers. One female officer was hit on her spine with a pick axe by some middle class graduate from Bristol.

I agree, I can't see a way out of this intense polarisation anywhere on the horizon. It is operating at both Macro ( international) levels and on Micro ( individual domestic politics) levels.

The polarisation is corrosive. I'm staggered at how dehumanising and demeaning attacks are standard. Especially from what positions itself as the left - I dont know if it was always like this and I've changed, or if its changed, or if its just that I expect better from the left.

If you want intense polarisation, look at Canada. Carney is crazily popular with Liberal voters, +80 or something, but he's -70 with Conservative voters. Same with Poilievre, who's extremely popular with Conservative voters but extremely unpopular with everyone else.

You would not think this from the occasional times UK media mentions Canada.

I'm not convinced that normie voters are all that polarised on policy, but I am sure the political class is incredibly out of touch with normie voters, and nobody more so than the sensible centrists.

We just saw yesterday the launch of Prosper UK, the new Tory Wet vehicle fronted by Ruth Davidson and Andy Street, and back by grandees like David Gauke, Amber Rudd and David Lidington. They correctly grasp that there are a lot of politically homeless voters right now. I'm less convinced that the solution is to try to turn the clock back to 2015, before The Unpleasantness that we don't mention, when sensible centrists like Cameron and Osborne were in charge, running a government full of sensible centrists like David Gauke and Amber Rudd and David Lidington, when the Tories were competitive in nice seats like Battersea and Brighton Kemptown.

They're clever and able people, but they don't seem to realise their ship sailed long ago, and their analysis of Tory failure doesn't go much beyond "a big boy did it and ran away".

I think things have changed, for sure. People now respond to avatar versions of actual political issues/attitudes/alignments instead of to reality. By avatar versions, I mean all of these issues as they appear on social media rather than how they are in reality.
Everything is pursued with the same sort of over-excited dogmatism that people bring to crazy online sleuthing in 'true crime' stories, such as in the case of the missing woman Nicola Bulley. Longstanding threads on difficult subjects like Gaza just resemble the obsessive recreational anger that we see on threads about Harry and Meghan, etc., instead of fostering discussion of various viewpoints.
In the old days the weird emotions generated by online talk were confined to online - such as the intense spasm that the Moldies furore created on MN. Nowadays people bring the same type of energy to their real life conduct of political issues. Over-excited, righteous, angry, attacking and defensive.

Have we all seen the story of the Amelia meme, that started as a character on the Prevent website Pathways program highlighting the dangers of far right online radicalisation, and has now become an avatar champion for Zoomers who ID with her, proudly say #IStandWithAmelia, and the whole exercise has backfired?
Pretty much bookending the whole Adolescence phenomenon where a generation of boys and young men are being told 24/7 they're dangers, being radicalised, and again I believe this is having a detrimental opposite effect, likely making them angry and digging in.
The Amelia phenomenon is the funniest thing I've read, the left elites (in conjunction with 14 years of Tories culturally asleep at the wheel) complicit with the conditions they say breed resentment, anti socialism, misogyny, anti migrant and anti trans views, barking at young people they're beyond the pale for sharing Amelia's views, and the criticism thrown right back at the elites as the apparent mainstream turned extremist swathe embrace the epithets coming their way.
#JeSuisAmelia, so to speak.

I think a good proportion of Leftists have always demonised Tories and others considered right wing. They have to be personally hated as being really bad, selfish people etc. It has always been vitriolic; whreas Tories have tended to view Leftists as stupid,naive incompetents and fantasists. The Jeremy Corbyn and Dianne Abbot portrayals were probably the worst.