The Greens keep ploughing away in the divisive field of identity politics. Talk about a dead end.

The Green's co-leader says her party is right and the Supreme Court is wrong on gender and sex. A very pricey approach. See you in court! Bring your debit card!

Terrific cover artwork by my mate Glyn Goodwin.

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HAPPY MAY DAY!

By Alan Story

Over this past weekend, I put up a bit of a naive post - if that is the best word for it – on my personal Facebook page. The end result of what I posted did, however, turn out to be very revealing. Identity politics is a divisive dead end.

I had been reading some news clips that followed the 16 April decision by the Supreme Court in a high-profile case about how to interpret the Equality Act of 2010.

The most important sentence in this unanimous judgement by the UK's highest court said, “the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man… mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man.” [ If you have the time and inclination, you can read a well-written summary of what For Women Scotland Ltd. means HERE…including a link to the full unanimous decision.] To be clear: the case was NOT changing the law but rather only interpreting it, despite some downright inaccurate and scare-mongering reporting to the contrary you may have read.

The 16 April decision has sparked a lot of debate as well as some number of demonstrations across the UK by some activists. They think you definitely can change your sex from the sex you had at birth and that the idea of “biological sex” is dead wrong. A statue in Parliament Square of suffragist Millicent Fawcett was recently defaced in one protest.

One party leader vehemently opposing this decision is Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Greens. The news clip I posted on my Facebook page featured Denyer in a Sky News piece.

Carla Denyer, current Green Party co-leader and first term MP for Bristol Central. Her term as co-leader ends 1 October and she has told her core followers she will not be re-offering.

Headed “Green Party co-leader denies split over trans rights”, the Sky piece quoted Denyer as saying “Green Party policy is clear that trans women are women, trans men are men…” [ As I learned later, Denyer, has leaked out the news she will not be co-leader much longer… though NOT because of this case it should be emphasised. Deputy leader Zack Polanski is eager to replace her. More on this below.]

“TROUBLE AHEAD FOR THE GREENIES”

Significantly, this article showed that Denyer’s statement directly contradicts the findings of Britain's highest court.

Having myself once been a member of the Green Party (and once holding an elected post) and having written a lot about it and its fixation on identity politics in recent months, I added a mere five words above the Sky news clip: “Trouble ahead for the Greenies.”

That hardly seemed a sensationalist prediction and, after interviewing three lawyers in the past 48 hours, is actually understated.

Unless the Greens radically change a number of their policies as a result of this case, they could face a lorry load of litigation from members and ex-members …and they will keep losing. (In litigation over the same type of sex and gender issue, they lost the Shahrar Ali case – and almost £100,000 – in early 2024.) The next discrimination case, launched by Emma Bateman, moves ahead at the end of May 2025.

Bateman’s case will be “dramatically strengthened” by the 16 April ruling, a lawyer told THE LEFT LANE yesterday. The court clarified that “sex is biological” and that is exactly what she and other gender-critical activists have long argued, said another lawyer on background.

A VERY PRICEY STRATEGY

As articulated by Denyer, the Green Party’s strategy seems to be based on the notion that the UK’s highest court is wrong on the issue of biological sex and that a motion passed by a few hundred people at a Green Party conference is right. So just plough on. Rather a chancy approach … and a very pricey one as well.

It raises the question: will Green Party members want to endorse and pay for litigation based on an illegal policy and on a view the courts say does not hold water? Long-time party member Ricky Knight certainly does not; see the sidebar story at the end headed THE GREEN’S GO “DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE”

Back to Facebook. Minutes after I posted the Sky News piece, the comments started to pile up on my page, first as a trickle of messages and then soon as a digital deluge. And they got more and more abusive.

I then read the view of a leading firm of solicitors in discrimination law about the Supreme Court decision. It said: “Transgender people remain protected from all forms of discrimination and harassment under the Equality Act. The For Women Scotland judgment is not to be seen as changing or undermining that in any way,” concluded the law firm.

But I was being naïve to then put up on my Facebook page a poster from a local group that contained some words giving a totally wrong spin on the case. Perhaps mobilising and agitational, but an incorrect interpretation. To kick-off a debate --- and this was the naïve bit -- I asked below the poster: “Could someone please explain the message in this poster?”

Definitely the wrong words. Have a serious debate as to whether a person can change his or her sex? And on social media? And in this hyped-up and downright poisonous environment over transgenderism? All but impossible. In the next few hours, the floodgates opened fully and more than two hundred messages poured in.

Here are a few samples: “I have 2 rules for dealing with terfs. 1) tell them to fuck off. 2) block them Fuck off”; “a lot of delusional and paranoïd people believe they are right… often they would benefit from psychiatric therapy”; “F anti-trans bigots. good that they get kicked out of the Green Party so this is your post revealing you’re anti-trans, Alan Story?” [ “TERF”, if not in your vocabulary, means a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.”]

On and on it went. It all got so OTT that, after a few hours, I did something I seldom do: I shut down the thread and hid all messages from sight.

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The brief version: 88 pages of Supreme Court legalese reduced to a simple chart.

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Let’s start to unpack the two threads of this piece: 1) identity politics; 2) the response of the Green Party to the 16 April court decision, including a warning to the party from a leading discrimination lawyer.

1) IDENTITY POLITICS IS DIVISIVE POLITICS

Obviously, I do not know the political views on a range of subjects of the people, that is my Facebook “friends”, who jumped into this thread.

But I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that 90% of them would agree with the following statements:

1) Israel is committing genocide in Gaza; 2) Donald Trump is a destructive force and his state visit should be cancelled; 3) Climate change is a very serious threat to the world; 4) The Starmer government is performing even worse than anticipated; it was a wretched move to attack disabled people; 5) We urgently need to step up the fight against the far right and parties such as Reform; 6) Racism and misogyny are very prevalent in our society and must be combated; 7) We need a wealth tax to re-distribute income. 8) We also need a mass socialist party urgently. (Well, perhaps only 30% or 40% agree with that one! LOL!)

You get the overall point. My Facebook page is not Reform Party central. Most of those who responded on the weekend could be broadly categorised as “progressive” and as people who think that we need major changes in our society. Some, I know, want a revolution.

So we are unified on a lot of big issues and on structural ones based on political power held by those above us, on economic might and on the need for collective class power.

But when we come to the issue of identity politics, so-called “trans rights”, is “sex a biological category?”, and related issues, huge divisions and rancour and irrationality take over. It definitely did on my Facebook page on the weekend.

(A note on terms: I avoid using the term “trans rights” because it implies that those who do not buy into the whole “trans-fundamentalist” package are somehow against rights for transgender people. Lots of us recognise transgender people suffer discrimination and are in favour of granting them legally binding rights. Where the disagreement comes is when those so-called “rights” diminish or restrict “the rights” of others. This can happen by accident or intention.)

A couple of people suggested in the Facebook thread that identity politics is being raised “to divide the left.”

NOT ARISEN BY ACCIDENT; A WEDGE ISSUE

This polarising “situation has not arisen by accident”, wrote Green Party member Tom Scott in a 2021 article. “Trans rights were identified several years ago by right-wing thinktanks and lobby groups in the US as a wedge issue that could open up a promising front in the ‘culture wars’ … Even better, it could also be exploited to widen a fault-line on the left.”

Here, we are getting closer to the truth. But we need to go further. The very subject of identity politics is based on a highly individualised world view as to solutions, on seeing groups of average folks in competition over rights, and on seeing people with certain similarities as all being “essentially the same” and having the same needs.

While few progressives deny that trans gender people suffer discrimination, transgenderism, one form of identity politics, is based on the view that “oppression is everywhere”, says US sociologist Vikek Chibber, and all oppressions are somehow equal. In fact, they are not.

What he and others call the “cultural turn” in politics is, in fact, “a turn away from taking the political economy and the facts about the economic structures, pillars and foundations of modern society” and instead “looking to people’s ideology, their culture, their consciousness as being the key to understanding essentially anything”, Chibber explained in a recent video. This “cultural turn” has, for example, led to the rise of lifestyle politics.

As a tangent, it is useful for socialists in the UK to learn some negative lessons from the United States, the epicentre of identity politics, where as another sociologist, Charles Derber, argues, the left is “virtually an identity-politics party” and “offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism.” Moreover, a “new McCarthyism” has exploded, adds another commentator, against anyone who challenges the basic tenets on transgenderism…as was witnessed, in miniature, on my Facebook page on the weekend.

THE TRANSGENDISM ROW WILL CARRY ON

We will return in future to the question of identity politics and its growing primacy, but two things are more than clear.

First, the just-reignited row over transgenderism is a row that is going to carry on for many months. A news story in THE TELEGRAPH on 24 April told us that that a large number of domestic abuse shelters, mostly for women, plan to ignore the Supreme Court ruling. This will be good for another round of commentary in locations such as the Daily Mail or on reactionary radio talk shows where they love to stir up conflict. (Listen to Nick Ferrari on LBC.)

Second, identity politics has led to increased disunity and conflict in progressive circles, including in the Green Party.

THE GREENS HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE

In coming weeks and months, the Green Party can choose several routes. It can continue along the current trajectory that puts great emphasis on identity politics or it can move away from this approach and concentrate more on issues such as climate change and economic injustice.

The organisational issues are quite stark if the party wishes to move in a new direction. Although Green Party membership now is in the range of 60,000, the party is actually controlled by about 200-300 activists. Most of those activists, sometimes called the “identitarians “(that is, “those concerned with promoting the interests of one’s own cultural group”) will be dead against the Supreme Court ruling and its implications for the Greens.

Yet, this core group of insiders controls all of the parties leading bodies, such as the GPRC, GPEX, the Standing Orders Committee ( which controls what goes on the agenda at party conferences) and the Disciplinary Committee ( which decides who gets suspended and/or gets expelled.) Its members dominate party conferences where those attending have the time and money to do so. It is far from representative.

THE LEFT LANE reported on the most recent GP conference in Manchester in September. We revealed how certain proposed resolutions critical of the disciplinary processes of the GP simply never made it onto the agenda. See, for, example, a motion titled “End the Purge”; though it had been signed by 60 party members, this motion was blocked from ever being discussed on the conference floor.

The “identitarians” on the GP Standing Orders Committee were in charge of this obstruction at the Manchester conference.

A large contingent of those purged over recent years and mentioned in the above motion were GP members who, by their words or actions, revealed that they held “gender critical beliefs”, that is, they believed that “sex is biological” and hence took the same view as the Supreme Court.

THE LEFT LANE reported on some of their cases in a lengthy issue of 4 September 2024 headed “ Mimicking Labour: more than 20 Green Party activists expelled or suspended in recent months is “without precedent”

Carla Denyer and others in the GP leadership may not like to face the legal and political reality, but the recent Supreme Court decision puts all of this straight back onto the Green Party’s agenda and its governance.

Here are several issues the Greens will have to face:

1) THE GREENS ARE LIABLE TO LOSE FURTHER DISCRIMINATION CASES

Will the Greens change some of their basic policies, including what views are considered “repugnant” by some in the party and has led to numerous expulsions? As currently stated, some numbers of the party’s documents are clearly illegal as a guide to administrative or disciplinary action and obvious targets for lawsuits.

Here are two examples. The Green Party’s disciplinary committee operates under a document entitled “Guidance to Identify Queerphobia.” In a section on the issue of identifying transphobia, the guidance states:

“Transphobic behaviour typically includes actions which convey a view that trans women are not “real women”, are men, and /or male people.” (There is parallel wording for trans men.)

Another example of alleged transphobia is labelled “misgendering”, which is called “referring to someone using a word, especially a pronoun or a form of address which is not correctly reflect the gender with which they identify and/or know themselves to be.”

It was this type of wording and overall approach which was used in the past to expel or suspend a long list of Green Party members.

In 30 April interview with Elizabeth McGlone, a managing partner in the law firm Didlaw, and an expert on discrimination law, I asked her whether the Green Party would be liable financially if it expelled members again based on such clauses.

“Yes, it would. In the current landscape and based on precedent and the recent Supreme Court decision, the Green Party would be at risk of losing a discrimination case if they used such clauses - clauses that were never fit for purpose - to expel a member,” McGlone said in a phone interview. “It appears some political parties would rather go bankrupt than follow the law,” she added.

A Green Party member – or anyone else - holding the view that “sex is biological” is considered to have a view which is called a “protected characteristic” under the Equalities Act 2010. And McGlone noted: it is not just a view; it is a fact.”

2) WHAT LIES AHEAD IN THE COURTS

How will the Greens respond to upcoming lawsuits over the same issue that have been dragging on for several years? Will they settle? Or do they want to go through another trial as occurred with Sharar Ali in 2023 and 2024 ?

One case starting on 27 May will involve Emma Bateman, a long-time environmental activist from Suffolk and the former chair of a group called Green Party Women. Bateman has been expelled from the Greens three times over five years because she believes that sex is biological. It is fair to suggest that the verdict in Bateman's case will be pivotal.

Former Green Party member Alison Teal of Sheffield.

Alison Teal of Sheffield also has a case against the Greens. Like Bateman, she is a long-standing environmental activist. Teal came to national prominence 6-8 years ago over the infamous Sheffield street trees massacre. Almost 5,000 mostly healthy street trees got the chop under a Private Finance Initiative deal

Teal, a former Green councillor in the city, was selected in September 2022 as the party’s general election candidate in Sheffield Central. Soon after being selected, however, she was suspended from the party for her gender critical beliefs.

But the party’s disciplinary procedures are so one-sided and lethargic that, 22 months later at election time in the summer of 2024, Teal remained suspended. (Her case was a simple one that would have taken less than 90 minutes to adjudicate.) But Teal was blocked from running for the Greens and ran instead as an independent.

A 29 May story in THE LEFT LANE detailing the case was headed: “The sad saga of Sheffield Green Alison Teal; How a disciplinary issue was transformed into an assassination in the identity politics wars.”

As of late April 2025, Teal’s case is now on hold. She was able to raise £30,000, but, as is typical in such cases, the defendant (the Green Party) has been stalling for many months. At the minute, Teal lacks the funds to continue the case against an opponent with far deeper pockets.

To assist Bateman and to make sure the same fate does not temporarily derail her case as has happened to Teal, HERE is the link to Bateman’s crowdfunder.

More cases may come forward as a result of the Supreme Court decision. Minutes before publication on 30 April, we learned that former deputy leader Shahrar Ali is taking the Green Party to court for a second time.

3) A NEW GREEN LEADERSHIP IS ON THE HORIZON

GP deputy leader Zack Polanski is on the right. The current co-leaders, Denyer and Ramsey, are also in the photo. Polansky wants to step up a notch.

There is also the question of who will lead the Green Party during the upcoming period which is likely to be a bit of a turbulent era.

Denyer's term as a co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, alongside Adrian Ramsay, began on October 1, 2021. Green Party leadership elections are held biennially, meaning her current term is likely to end on October 1, 2025. She was expected to run again after the Greens won a record four MPs, including her, in the July 2024 general election.

To my knowledge, THE LEFT LANE is the first publication to break the unexpected news that Denyer is not re-offering as co-leader. (If you don’t know much about Denyer, HERE and HERE are brief bios.) We have contacted the Green Party media office for an explanation of why Denyer is not re-offering, but have received no reply. [Perhaps they will explain it to The Guardian or the BBC by the weekend.]

It is not known if Adrian Ramsay , a first-term MP for the new Suffolk and Norfolk constituency of Waveney Valley, will reoffer as a leader when his term expires in October.

Ramsay is noticeably less keen on identity politics than Denyer. But whether he possesses the courage and the base within the party to steer it away from the treacherous reefs of identity politics is uncertain. As mentioned above, there is a “New McCarthyism” about on trans issues.

It would be a gesture of reconciliation for Ramsey to welcome back Bateman, Teal and other experienced environmental activists into the party and also to settle the outstanding lawsuits without further expenses.

There definitely would be opposition among the identitarians, that is the GP trans lobby and a group called “Greens Organise”, to such a gesture. It is these two groups which are the main power base of Denyer in the party. Is also the power base of former GP leader Sian Barry and deputy leader Zack Polanski.

This power base is used to flexing its muscles. In April 2024 when the Cass review on puberty blockers and related matters for children and young people was released, reports said that the trans lobby would refuse to campaign in the general election if the Green Party endorsed her report. The party did not. Over a year later, the party is still silent on Cass.

Polanski, a London Assembly member since 2021 and deputy leader of the Greens since 2022, is very keen to succeed Denyer as either co-leader or sole leader (if Ramsey does not re-offer.)

But Polanski is even more vociferous than Denyer or Barry about the centrality of identity politics and transgenderism in the Green’s overall messaging. Some Green Party members I have interviewed question whether more turmoil under Polanski over such issues is the best way to build the Green Party for the future.

Polanski also has a dark cloud in his background. And many think it is far more serious than a foolish or offensive tweet sent 15 or 20 years ago.

Back in 2013, Polanski was featured in a lengthy story in THE SUN about how he operated as a Harley Street hypnotist where – for the sum of £220.00 an hour - women would come in and be able to picture themselves as having bigger breasts. The system “could become popular very quickly because it's so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job,” Polanski is quoted as saying. HERE is original SUN story, headed “Can you really THINK your boobs bigger?

Polanski has since apologised and dismisses it as old news. But the incident is recorded on his Wikipedia page and one wonders how many voters would trust a party led by a person who once operated such a dodgy scam and who, as one woman I know said, “so exploited women’s vulnerability.”

WHAT IS THE WAY FORWARD?

There is a great deal for Greens to think I think as they plot out their future. Make comments below if you wish.

Since I've been covering the Greens in detail over the past 12 months and written perhaps seven or eight articles, one example of a fight back that really impressed me occurred the North West region of the party back in October 2024.

Completely fed up as to how their representative on the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC) was in a serious conflict of interest over a dispute, about 200 members of the region held an extraordinary general meeting to force her from her post. 74% of the members attending passed the motion recalling her.

THE LEFT LANE covered the event HERE’; see the second story.

It is an example of grassroots “people power” that inspires.

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THE GREENS GO “DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE”

Ricky Knight, a Green Party activist for decades and a GP councillor for North Devon.

Long time Green Party member Ricky Knight is one of hundreds of party members who feel the party has been going down the wrong road on the sex and gender issue for some time. “Down the rabbit hole, into a minefield,” is how he put it.

“I don't know any of my political friends here who want to see harm done to trans people, but the party’s leadership is simply not following the science on this issue,” Knight, a Green councillor in the unitary authority of North Devon, told THE LEFT LANE in a 29 April phone interview.

“I support this Supreme Court decision. We should follow the law,” he said.

“And moreover, the leadership’s view is, well, caustic on the doorstep,” said Knight who took time away from campaigning for the North Devon elections for our interview.

A recent poll in The Times newspaper found that 96% of people asked agreed that “the Supreme Court (is) right to define women based on biological sex.”

Knight said he went to the most recent annual general meeting of the Greens and asked how much all of the party’s litigation over the trans issue is costing the party and its members.

“Zack (Polanski) and the others wouldn’t say, they just ducked and dived,” Knight said. “It is just not right.”

A Politics Home story in October 2024 reported: “The Green Party has spent £1m over four years fighting legal battles against its own members, as divisions over gender continue to threaten the party’s finances.” In October 2023, the Greens increased the monthly dues of its members, in part to pay for it ballooning legal bills.

After the hottest year in recorded history, Knight, a long-time campaigner for climate justice, believes that the Greens should focus far more on this issue and related ones instead of having its leaders such as Denyer give what he called “car crash interviews” on sex and gender issues on the BBC.

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CHECK THIS OUT

1. Below is my nominee for the most reactionary campaign ad in a by-election ( 1 May in Runcorn and Helsby) by a supposedly “left party”, namely George Galloway’s so-called “Worker’s” Party of Britain.

Said socialist commentator Darren Galpin: “ Unfortunately the Worker’s Party have opted to position their rhetoric atop the slippery slope marked Reform UK.”

This WPB messaging personifies the right wing nationalist politics of Galloway’s followers, including the WPB’s deputy leader Peter Ford, a former British diplomat. The by-election was called after the sitting Labour MP physically assaulted a constituent and was forced to resign.

It sounds as if little has changed since THE LEFT LANE did a three-part series on Galloway’s party in February 2024. All three parts can be read HERE.

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2. Memo to Keir Starmer

A Bluesky message from Luke Tryl of MORE IN COMMON

Nicked from Left Foot Forward

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Edited by Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber: http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe

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