I don't know whether Your Party will even make it to the starting line. There's a few rifts opening up as they fail to deal with the culture war bollocks effectively - I like Corbyn as an individual MP or a principled protestor, but he's just not competent at media relations, avoiding obvious rhetorical traps, or at the kind of strong leadership/cat-herding required to be in charge of a political party.Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 03, 2025 12:15 pmGreat stuff, and a real landslide win. Hope they join forces with Corbyn/Sultana (n my dreams, merge with them). Shame Polanski didn't take over 6 months back, maybe the Greens could have taken the purged Labour and independents in . . . now Your Party wants to build momentum of its own and will almost certainly resist a merger.Puja wrote: ↑Tue Sep 02, 2025 3:46 pm Polanski wins the Green Party leadership and comes out swinging:
That's a hell of a strident first message after winning the leadership of a national political party. I have to say I quite like it. People are legitimately angry about how broken the country is and how everything has been getting steadily worse for ordinary people, but so far the only politicians interested in speaking to that anger have been Reform and their "solution" of blaming refugees/trans people/the woke.
Hopefully Polanski can break through and harness the anger of decent people to shift the political discourse away from it's continual slide rightwards.
Puja
I was impressed with Polanski's answer in his press conference yesterday when someone asked, "We know your own stance on trans rights, but how do you plan to lead a party that could be divided already?"
Excellent answer - not accepting the divisive framing of "Does everyone in the party agree on this wedge issue and what are you going to do with the ones that don't" and instead reframing it as, "We don't all need to agree and all hold the same personal beliefs - we're all going in the same direction and that direction involves everyone having human rights." I loved the line about "broad churches still have walls" - that's the bit that Corbyn's never been great at."I don't think we're divided; I think we have a really, really strong common cause here - tackling the climate crisis, protecting nature, and also protecting people's human rights. Trans rights are human rights and I'm really pleased that, as a party, we have been through a democratic debate several times now which has been settled in recognising that we're an inclusive, progressive party.
"Now, I'm really aware of a quote that's going around New York at present [coined by Socialist Mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani], which is 'If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 things, let's work together. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 things, please see a psychiatrist.'
"You don't need to agree with me on everything. There are red lines though - we are a broad church party, but broad churches still have walls. And human rights are one of those walls, and actually it's brilliant to quote one of our recently elected deputy leaders [Mothin Ali, who has faced questions over what his professional level of support for LGBTQ+ rights would be, given his personal faith is not supportive] because I love the line - he said, 'The same people who hate the LGBTQ community are the same people who hate the Muslim community.'
"And I'm also aware of this non-insignificant moment, that the Green Party now has a Jewish leader and a Muslim deputy leader and we've had this discussion - we recognise that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same coin and ultimately, when communities ask for solidarity, including the trans community, the only response - the only authentic response - is to give that solidarity."
Puja
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