Mick Hartley

Shahrar Ali in the Telegraph – How my beloved Green Party lost the plot:

I’d probably mark Autumn 2016 as the point when the identitarian turn really started to take grip of the party. This coincided with the end of my term as Deputy Leader (of course!) and Aimee Challenor (the party’s equality spokesperson) successfully moving a motion on trans rights that said: “Transwomen are women”.

I missed the debate, but already sensed a determination by Challenor to win at all costs. A hallmark of authoritarian groupthink is voting a certain way because someone tells you to, not because you’ve reasoned your way there. That same year Challenor’s father David was charged with raping a ten year old child.

David Challenor, who had been Aimee’s election agent, was sentenced in 2018 for 22 years for child sex offences. Aimee resigned after an investigation was launched into failures of disclosure. I was one of a few people to call out the double standards at the heart of the party’s refusal to condemn or criticise the Challenors. But as a party we couldn’t bring ourselves to properly reflect on how we had left ourselves so vulnerable to entryism from gender ideology extremists.

Fast forward to today. Gender ideological insanity has accelerated to such a degree that, year on year, scores of gender critical activists have now been persecuted or purged out of the party for wrongthink. Four successive co-chairs of Green Party Women – Emma Bateman, Zoe Hatch, Dawn Furness and Amanda Stones – have been suspended or expelled. Darren Johnson, a London Assembly member for 16 years, was suspended. Eric Walker, a 100-year-old D-Day veteran, was suspended.

Not content with unlawfully removing me as a spokesperson, the party now faces a second court case after revoking my membership.

This is the first leadership bid I’ve been debarred from contesting. It is with sadness that I witness the descent of my party into the entrenched identity politics so typical of the hard Left.

It's not just the takeover by gender nutters: there's also plenty of room for the antisemites:

One who shouted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) and described getting a seat on Leeds city council as a “win for the people of Gaza” had previously been involved in the harassment of a Jewish university chaplain driven from his home.

Two who won seats in Bristol had been involved in social media posts which led the city’s Labour Party to fear that the Greens were becoming a haven for antisemitism.

A Peterborough Green councillor has also been shown by the Jewish press to have made insulting anti-Israel comments….

The new face of the Green Party, which has traditionally been involved in campaigning to save hedgerows and improve air quality, came as a surprise to observers of last week’s local elections.

Three of the four councillors whose activities have raised cause for concern were previously Labour supporters or activists, raising the likelihood that Jeremy Corbyn fans have been migrating to the Greens and changing their culture.

Mothin Ali, wearing a keffiyeh, the scarf symbolic of Palestinian resistance, celebrated his victory in Leeds by raising his arm in the air and saying: “We will not be silenced. We will raise the voice of Gaza. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Allahu akbar!”

Ali was known for stirring up hostility to Rabbi Zacheria Deutsch, the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University, who was advised by police to go into hiding with his wife and two children after death and rape threats. Deutsch, a citizen of Israel, was called up as a reservist with the Israeli Defence Forces after the Hamas massacres of October 7 last year.

Julie Bindel, back in May:

In recent years, the party has gone bonkers: it has become obsessed with supporting policies likely to appeal to idealistic, upper-middle-class sixth formers before they grow up.

Green party candidates have said they want to decriminalise the entire sex trade. The party also wants guidance issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling to be withdrawn. Denyer told the BBC this week that the guidance puts trans people at risk of discrimination. But what about women?

They don't care.