Playing with fire
The Gorton and Denton by-election
A good pub quiz question in the year 2050 will go something like this: ‘True or false, the “green” in the “Green Party” originally referred to the environment.’ By this point, the etymological origins of Britain’s sectional Islamic party will be as obscure as the relationship between British Conservatives and 17th century Irish bandits.
A key milestone, our mid-century quiz regular will inform his teammates, was the 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election in which the Greens stood neck and neck in a three-way race with Labour and Reform.
Eagle-eyed observers these past weeks will have noted how the once environment-focused party have been pitching at particular sections of ‘the community’, with campaign leaflets featuring candidate Hannah Spencer wearing a red and black keffiyeh while posing in front of a mosque.
Written in Urdu, the pamphlet calls for voters to: ‘Push the falling walls one more time. Labour must be punished for Gaza. Reform must be defeated and Green must be voted for. Vote for the Green Party for a strong Muslims voice.’ Then it adds, in English, ‘Stop Islamophobia. Stop Reform.’
There was also an Urdu-language video linking Reform Party candidate Matt Goodwin and leader Nigel Farage with Donald Trump and ICE deportation raids. The video then cuts to Gaza, before showing Keir Starmer beside India’s Narendra Modi. Subtle stuff.
The video states in Urdu: ‘A cruel politician can win if we don’t vote Green to stop the Reforms… Workers, cleaners, drivers, mothers – it’s us who keep this area running. But the politicians are not working for us… The Reforms want to break up our communities. They want to deport families who have lived here for years, and they want to tax people born abroad even more. They give air to Islamophobia, and they put our safety and dignity at risk.’
Over the weekend the party told activists that ‘We hit all 14 mosques this Friday… Our Ramadan cards went down a treat, even with the battle of the leaflets against Labour! We are now in our critical final 5 days, and we need volunteers to help with Taraweeh conversations and leafleting. Do you attend evening Taraweeh at any of these mosques? If so, can you help with leaflets and conversations after prayers?’ Spencer even shared on Instagram that she was fasting to observe the beginning of Ramadan, although she only fasted for a day – in February. In northern Europe.
Party leader Zack Polanski seems to think it’s all very funny, as does his deputy Mothin Ali. Look how the right-wing trolls are triggered! Ali justified the video on the ground that ‘We’ve tried to appeal to people from all kinds of backgrounds, Some of the slogans are based off Bangladeshi or Pakistani typical political slogans. The same slogans have been used to find a message that people can resonate with. That’s just about inclusivity.’ Sure – nothing says inclusivity like campaigning in a foreign language which 97 percent of the population cannot understand.
But then, in the worldview of some, ‘inclusivity’ is anything which furthers the interests of favoured minorities, just as ‘equality’ is anything that raises their status relative to less favoured groups. Everything is about power imbalances, the thinking behind asymmetrical multiculturalism, in which the sectional interests of minority groups are to be promoted and patronised (in both senses), without consideration about what this entails. It has even led white secular progressives to encourage overtly sectarian Islamic politics, playing with fire and laughing at how edgy and provocative they are.
Britain’s Green Party has historically been a thing of amusement to many, a bunch of harmless hippies and Quakers with wacky beliefs; at the time of their first breakthrough in the early 1990s their most high-profile figure was David Icke, then seen as an amusing crank with interests in new age mysticism and alternative medicine.
As traditional politics fractured, the Greens came to fill the space inhabited by high-education, low-income graduates, the group who most favour redistributive economics and highly progressive social policies. Yet political parties have no souls, as such, being merely vote-seeking businesses, and they go where the market is - and now they find the lowest hanging fruit in appealing to sectarian interests.
If decades of generous immigration policies have created constituencies where people vote along religious lines, and are more comfortable with the national language of Pakistan than English, there is nothing to stop someone appealing to that market. It’s within the rules of democracy, if not the spirit.
Gorton and Denton is among the increasing number of constituencies in which a candidate can win by appealing overtly to the Islamic vote; ‘Gaza independents’ won 5 seats in 2024 and could win 10 or 12 by 2029 and 20 or 30 by the election that follows; after that, the ceiling is limited by high levels of segregation. This could be good news for the Green Party, if that’s the path they want to go down, and they certainly don’t seem to shy away from the prospect.
Polanski has welcomed the endorsement of the Muslim Vote, an organisation which instructs people how to cast their ballot along religious lines, even if adding the caveat that people should vote as individuals. In February he told PoliticsHome that ‘I think any organisation that wants to back the Green Party because they align with our values is something that I applaud and welcome.’
It would be interesting to know to what extent he thinks they do align with their values. This is a party which supports giving children puberty blockers as part of ‘gender-affirming care’. A party which wants to legalise all drugs and prostitution. Having the most radical views on the gender issue of any party, even its co-chairs, historically a man and woman, have been described as ‘Self identifying Non-Male Co-Chair: (female)’ and ‘Self identifying Non-Female Co-Chair: (male)’. Back in January the former co-chair of Green Party Women ‘was found to have breached diversity rules by making “clearly antagonistic” comments about “fae/faer” pronouns, a type of “neopronoun” inspired by the mythical world.’
This is eccentric by the standards of the median British voter, and British Muslims have far more socially conservative views than the median voter, and by a huge distance. This is especially true regarding homosexuality and the role of women, and the most ruddy-faced bar room reactionary at the 19th hole is a blue-haired college radical in comparison. (Incidentally, I’m also not sure how the Green Party squares their environmental transport policy with the fact that British-Pakistanis tend to favour cars, as social conservatives with families.)
