Eight questions for the Green Party after Makerfield candidate fiasco
While the party does not appear able to answer most of these, perhaps readers will consider them
On Thursday morning, the Green Party announced Chris Kennedy as its candidate for the Makerfield by-election. It described him as a “safeguarding nurse, battle-tested Green campaigner, [and] passionate grassroots visionary”. By Thursday evening he was gone.
It turned out that Kennedy had shared false flag conspiracy theories on social media after the firebombing of Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green two months ago.
In the wake of this, I have eight key questions. Ultimately, I do not expect the Green Party to answer them; they are points I would encourage readers to think about for themselves.
1) Exactly what vetting did the Green Party do here?
I want to set aside the antisemitism for one minute (don’t worry, I’ll be coming back to that in due course). This is a by-election for a parliamentary seat. It is going to be the focal point for UK politics – or English politics, at least – for the next month. And yet this individual – with his social media history – was selected.
During the local elections, there were revelations about a variety of Green party candidates and their highly disturbing antisemitic social media posts. But in that instance the Greens could at least use the defence that they were fielding thousands of candidates and that the resources they had meant that unfortunately some rotten apples would slip through.
That excuse, weak as it was, no longer applies at all. In this instance, the Greens had a grand total of one person to vet.
Was there any vetting at all? If there was, who did it? If someone did it, did they see those posts and think there was nothing wrong with them?
2) Do the Greens understand what antisemitism is?
It’s unclear whether the Greens actually understand what the issue is with what Chris Kennedy shared, other than it makes them look bad.
This is an example of antisemitism because it suggests that Israel (aka. The Jewish State), carried out an attack on Jews in the UK, for some nefarious reason. That an attack on Jewish infrastructure cannot have been real, that it was concocted for some shadowy, insidious motive.
As I’ve written about before, go just a little deeper and this conspiracy theory all falls apart. Was the fantasised aim from Jerusalem here to engender sympathy for British Jews? To encourage Britain to contribute more actively to the fight against Iran? To convince more British Jews to move to Israel (even as Israeli airspace was closed due to Iranian missile fire?)
It’s no coincidence that one post Chris Kennedy shared on this subject was from a virulent far right ethnonationalist, described by HOPE not Hate as a racist and an antisemite. Because this sort of charge has had its traditional home on the far right. It’s only in the last few decades that it has migrated to the far left, via the medium of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is perfectly possible to be pro-Palestinian without being antisemitic, but it is also true that left-wing antisemitism is, by and large, an outgrowth stemming from poisoned positions on Israel. And it is clear that the Green party leadership currently finds it politically advantageous to deny this.
3) Does the Green Party understand that its leader being Jewish isn’t some magical get out of antisemitism free card?
The standard response from the Green Party to evidence of antisemitism from their candidates has been to point to Zack Polanski being Jewish. As myself and many others have pointed out, that’s farcical tokenism. The Conservatives having a black female leader does not mean that they magically cannot have problems with anti-black racism or misogyny. Reform UK having a Muslim chairman and London mayoral candidate is certainly not a defence against the charge that the party has a problem with Islamophobia. So why do Green Party members and supporters think their situation is magically different?
4) Why is this case different from that of the Green’s primary videographer?
In March, Jewish News wrote about the social media posts shared by Jeremy Clancy. Mr Clancy has been behind a series of videos produced for the Greens, including party political broadcasts.
As we showed in the piece, Clancy – who has worked closely with Zack Polanski and Green Deputy leader Mothin Ali – shared multiple posts about how the Hatzola ambulance firebombing was a false flag operation.
The Green Party’s response was pure obfuscation:
“Green Party representatives have been clear in standing in solidarity with Jewish communities as they face a heightened level of threats and violence, and our leaders have made public comments condemning antisemitism and expressing solidarity with the Jewish community over the Golders Green attack.”
Nothing about Clancy and what he had done. Just ‘our senior representatives made statements about the attack’.
You might have thought that the Greens would perhaps quietly drop Clancy after our story. Not in the slightest – last week they published a new video of his, featuring Zoe Garbett, a Green assembly member and the new mayor of Hackney.
So why is this case different? Is it because Clancy isn’t as high profile and there was less of a chance of national media picking up the story?
5) Why did the Green Party’s initial response to Kennedy’s withdrawal cite “personal and family reasons”?
Yes, when the news first emerged that Kennedy was stepping back from the candidacy he’d been announced for just a few hours previously, the Green Party’s official statement gave that as the reason he was stepping back, saying “We wish Chris the best and understand that family has to come first.”
Except that it is now entirely clear why Kennedy stepped back. As The Times reported, it came in the wake of them approaching him about his social media posts. As Mark Wallace, chief executive of Total Politics Group, noted on social media: “The ‘personal reason’ turns out to be that he personally was into antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
So in other words, the Greens were trying to obfuscate as to why he had withdrawn. Not only was this dishonest, it was also incredibly stupid, as they must have known that the actual reason would emerge just a few hours later. Remarkably, however, PA and other outlets have specifically reported: “The Green Party said its earlier statement still stood on the withdrawal of Mr Kennedy.” So, having been caught out in a lie, they doubled down.
6) Why does Zack Polanski refuse to properly address his own party’s problem?
Zack Polanski is extremely active on social media. He mysteriously had nothing to say yesterday about the case of his own candidate having to withdraw.
What he did have time to share on Twitter was a social media post from Alastair Campbell, about nasty comments from a social media account believed to have belonged to the Reform UK candidate in the by-election.
Campbell said: “Imagine if a candidate of any other party was found to have deleted an account with so many disgustingly offensive posts. I suspect we will hear very little of this as the Double Standards Squad continue to ply their trade to the benefit of the 5 million pound man [by which Campbell means Nigel Farage]”.
Well, we don’t have to imagine, do we, Zack? But mysteriously Polanski, so vocal on so many other cases, has nothing to say here.
It’s not just pathetic, it’s also terrible politics. Polanski could have said something like, “Look – this is an example of the Greens taking antisemitism seriously. We found that he’d posted these things, and he was out!”
The Greens were trying to obfuscate as to why he had withdrawn. Not only was this dishonest, it was also incredibly stupid
But he didn’t. We can only speculate as to why, but if I were to hazard a guess, it would be because Polanski knows the views shared by Kennedy are not just popular among the Greens, they are endemic (look at number 4 above, for example). Identifying what Kennedy did as antisemitism and showing that the Greens take it seriously would therefore leave the Greens in a situation where they would have to deal with a very large number of members who have openly shared the same sentiments.
And Polanski, I believe, is not prepared to do that.
Alternatively, there is the rather awkward point that there is absolutely nothing in the Green Party’s press statements to suggest that they kicked him out. The Times said they approached the candidate, after which he decided to step down. So we actually don’t know if the Green party would have tried to brazen it out, had he elected to stay as the candidate.
7) Is it not quite scary that a nurse who specialises in child safeguarding would have been found to have been sharing these views?
I have little more to say about this, other than I find it highly disturbing, but sadly not surprising. Jewish News has documented numerous examples of medical professionals engaging in grotesquely antisemitic behaviour. You can read about some of these cases here, here and here – though there are many more.
8) Do the Greens not understand how this completely undercuts their claim to be an anti-racist bulwark against Reform UK?
I genuinely did not expect that we would have to replay the latter part of the 2010s again in the 2020s, but here we are.
The antisemitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn completely undermined the party’s claims to hold some sort of moral high ground over right wing parties. The attempts by Corbynites to deny the antisemitism that was staring everyone else in the face ultimately led to a situation in which a Conservative party which had stumbled its way into Brexit managed to win an 80 seat majority.
This will happen to the Green Party as well. Ultimately, an increasing percentage of the population will come to roll their eyes at the Green Party talking about racism from Reform UK when there are a steady stream of Green party candidates found to have shared or expressed grotesque antisemitic sentiments.
It also provides Reform with a perfect counterattack. Various people on the far-left in the 2010s used to cite the glee with which right wing figures cited Labour antisemitism as evidence that it was a concocted issue. But it wasn’t – the reason Corbyn’s Labour was vulnerable to such criticism was precisely because they had a real problem. The Greens look to be following down the same path – it’s not a coincidence that so many of their new and vocal membership were previously Corbynites. You would think that people on the Left would remember Marx’s famous quote on history repeating itself.
Like I said at the start, these are not questions I would expect the Green party to answer – partly because they appear to be in denial about many of the issues expressed. But I hope that you, the reader, will consider them – and that it might impact your views going forward.
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