Zack Polanski is no stranger to magical thinking. Back in 2013, long before he became leader of the Green party, he claimed that hypnosis could increase breast cup size. He later apologised, admitting he had failed to recognise “that issues of misogyny and women’s body confidence exist in society”. But that magical thinking — the feeling that the world can be reshaped if you only say the right words — has lingered. In him. And through his Party.
Polanski insists his party is inclusive. Only the other week he declared it a “broad church”— though he did add, with a telling caveat, that “even churches have walls”. He might have thought he was being artful, but the soundbite was revealing. There’s a darker story currently playing out within the Green church: there are views that are tolerated, and views that aren’t. Indeed, over the past five years, the Greens have built walls high enough to shut out dozens of their own members — many of them women — whose only crime was to hold gender-critical views.
This week, Polanski is trumpeting a triumphant conference: “It’s exceeded my expectations,” he said, counting all his new members. Presumably, though, this doesn’t include those his party has cancelled, including the women’s rights group Green Women’s Declaration (GWD) who were turned away at the door. Their booking for a conference stall was cancelled, something that has been described as undemocratic and discriminatory — as well as being anti-women. But little of this makes it into the public realm.
My investigation tells the story of those people: the women who joined the Greens to fight for a “fairer greener future”, only to find themselves denounced, gagged and expelled. I have discovered an atmosphere of intimidation where safeguarding failures are ignored and political heresies are punished.
What emerges from it all is a portrait of a party in the grip of magical thinking. The Green Party still claims to be the radical conscience of British politics. But for many of those it has expelled, the truth is far more troubling.
Hellbound and Down 