The Green Party is a sinister mob. Take it from me, a former deputy leader

After the resignation of Carla Denyer, the Green Party is facing a leadership contest for which the membership has had their opportunity for genuine debate about its policy platform and electoral priorities artificially restricted. No activist or spokesperson who dares to stand up for the rights and protections of women, girls and children – especially, in the context of a decade of trans rights overreach – will escape the wrath of the totalitarian mob within.
I should know. In 2024, I won a landmark gender critical protected belief discrimination case against the Party, the first of its kind in politics, after I was unlawfully removed as front bench spokesperson for justice.
But let's start with the positives. It's true the Green Party has made progress in recent years. When I served as deputy leader, we managed to get 1 million votes in the 2015 general election. In 2024, under today's leadership, we achieved nearly 2 million votes and quadrupled our number of MPs to four. Year on year, we've increased our councillor share, too.
Yet these gains have been snail's pace compared to the seismic shifts in political landscape precipitated by the Farage machine. On Brexit, we lost the argument and the referendum. Devoid of either introspection or serious analysis, our then leaders resorted to writing off 52 per cent of the electorate as xenophobic or easily duped. Last week, Reform gained control of ten councils, dwarfing our own electoral achievements.
Not content with marginalising 52 per cent of voters, Green politicians have sought to alienate another 51 per cent. That's the logical consequence of a political movement which resorts to identitarian flag-waving and is in thrall to queer theory luxury beliefs. In the days following the Supreme Court judgment, the Green Party leadership demonstrated utter contempt for the rights and protections of women and girls.
On BBC's Any Questions, parliamentarian Siân Berry – who prides herself with having a science background – described sex in humans as 'not entirely binary'. On BBC Radio 4's Today, Co-Leader Adrian Ramsay refused to answer Nick Robinson's direct question, 'Are Transwomen Women?' four times. The view that trans women are women has been the policy of the Greens since 2016. It offers up a Stonewall campaign slogan as a literal truth, and conflates sex and gender identity. For his refusal to pronounce this holy dogma, officers of the Young Greens rewarded him with calls for his resignation.
The trio of car-crash interviews was completed by Carla Denyer who, following an appearance on BBC Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg, went viral for all the wrong reasons. She claimed that 'non-trans lesbian women' would be prohibited by the ruling from allowing 'trans lesbians', i.e. men, into their spaces.
There is no such thing as a male lesbian, and a space set up for same-sex attracted women is not for men. These rights for women are protected under the Equality Act.
The trouble with Denyer's resignation is it leaves the door open for an even more fanatical successor. With Carla, perhaps especially when she was on the ropes in an interview, you could still tell what she was thinking. For good or ill, that transparency helped electors decide, while others in the party feel they can get away with avoiding tough interviews or concealing what they really think.
Denyer's Deputy, Zack Polanski, who reportedly once set himself up as a hypnotherapist for breast enlargement, has recently launched his campaign to be Leader. I would challenge him on how a party can remain credible for telling the truth on climate science but continue to tell lies about what constitutes a biological woman. The Party is so negligent about equality law, they've retained gender self-identification as a criterion for eligibility to satisfy quotas for the leadership contest
I've long advocated for speaking and engaging with electors and politicians with whom we may strongly disagree. I regard it as fundamental to democratic politics that we should seek to persuade those not already won over to our policy proposals. The opposite betrays a deeply cynical approach to human beings, in which we have nothing to learn, even from those whom we would presume to govern. Government without consent descends into totalitarianism.
Not content to find themselves on the wrong side of a claim for unlawful discrimination against me, the Green Party is looking at a second lawsuit. I currently find myself excluded by the Green Party following a series of complaints all premised on my belief that sex is real.
Greens who share my temperament have been kicked out of the Party. Currently in exile, we may be disqualified from standing for leadership, but we do retain our resolve for a better kind of politics. The Green Party only claims to do politics differently. By God, they do, but not in a good way.
Shahrar Ali was Deputy Leader of the Green Party 2014-16 and a candidate for Leader in 2021 standing on a strongly gender critical platform. @ShahrarAli
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