Britain’s Greens Are More Radical Than Most Voters Think

Up until quite recently, Britain’s Green Party was for the most part a fairly run-of-the-mill, liberal environmentalist group. But, perhaps as the establishment parties—including the ‘Conservatives’—more openly adopted ‘green’ talking points, it has become far more radical than many voters are likely to know. Its leadership has taken more interest in the Palestinian cause in particular, along with other more leftist tropes.

So the party’s win in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election is hardly the great victory for “everyday people” that papers like the Guardian (fairly predictably) say it is.

The press has especially latched on to the fact the new Green MP, Hannah Spencer, is a plumber by trade. But, as Spiked’s chief political writer Brendan O’Neill highlighted after campaigning began, “she might get her hands dirty for a living but she adheres to every luxury belief of the remote establishment.”

Modernity is polluting, borders are overrated, that hulking fella in a dress is a woman—she buys it all. The digital left is cock-a-hoop because they’ve found something as rare as hen’s teeth—a working person who believes all the same post-truth crap they do.

Spencer was especially successful at securing the constituency’s Muslim vote, which is especially concerning for the Muslim-vote-reliant Labour party. Reports say that on the day of polling, she was filmed dancing in the street to an Arabic song, “My Blood Is Palestinian.” The party also posted a campaign video entirely in Urdu.

Journalist Jake Wallis Simons wrote in the Telegraph that “in ghettoised Britain, this was a straight fight between the working-class population of Denton—83% white, mostly in low-paid jobs, and supporting Reform—and the communities of Gorton, who are 60% non-white, 40% Muslim, and voting Green,” adding:

The result speaks for itself. It makes me fear for the future of our country.

Reform, which came second in Thursday’s vote, has reported “many cases” of so-called ‘family voting’—where a family member is seen to be (illegally) influencing somebody else’s vote—to the Electoral Commission and Greater Manchester Police, calling into question “the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas.”

Party leader Nigel Farage also branded the election an exercise in “sectarian voting.”