Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Responding to plans announced by Nigel Farage to rip up swathes of international law and deport thousands of migrants if Reform UK ever gained power, Green Party MP Ellie Chowns said:
“More inflammatory rhetoric from Farage at a sensitive time in many communities. This dangerous toxic bluster is clearly aimed at whipping up anger, hatred and even disorder. The way he talks about asylum seekers – our fellow global citizens – is reprehensible.
“The policy proposals themselves are unworkable. They rely on ripping up swathes of international law and would likely face many legal obstacles in the UK courts that could use British common law to block such cruelty.
“Iran, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan and Syria feature in the top ten countries for asylum seekers in the UK – all places where people face oppression, conflict, extreme poverty or famine. Asylum claims from people arriving from these countries have high approval rates – almost 100% in the case of Sudan and Syria [1].
“Yet former Reform UK Chair Zia Yusuf has suggested that a Reform government would pay brutal regimes like the Taliban to accept the return of migrants – including unaccompanied children. They must know what could happen to these people when they are returned – they will likely be abused, tortured or executed.
“This is not who we are as a nation. The vast majority of the British public are willing to show compassion towards those fleeing the terrible situations they leave behind.”
Climate science denier Nigel Farage explains that it’s simple to blame asylum-seekers or Muslims for everything.
Green party deputy leader Zack Polanski speaks at a protest in London, September 2023. Vuk Valcic/Reuters
No more Mr Nice Guy.
The Green party leadership contest, which began in May with deputy leader Zack Polanski announcing he was contesting the top job, is rumbling to an end. Most observers agree that Polanski will win on 2 September. Whatever happens, he will have transformed his party in the process, turning a slow-moving, conflict-avoidant political vehicle into a battleground of ideas.
This has unquestionably been a bruising leadership campaign. Things got off to a testy start, with Polanski’s rivals Ellie Chowns and the incumbent Adrian Ramsay insinuating that Polanski’s leadership bid was an ambush (responding to this, Polanski told Novara Media: “I think people need to be careful that there’s not an entitlement that they deserve to always hand the leadership to the next person waiting”). One anonymous senior party member accused Polanski of launching a “hostile takeover” – quite an allegation against the current deputy leader. Ramsay suggested that Polanski didn’t know how to win elections, an accusation Polanski described as “rude and disrespectful”. Pressed by LBC’s Iain Dale on whether or not he liked Polanski (with Polanski sitting right in front of him), Ramsay struggled to answer. In the Guardian, Chowns criticised Polanski for being “polarising”. Though generally avoiding bad-mouthing his rivals, Polanski has offered occasional barbs of his own, implicitly accusing his rivals of “briefcase politics”.
Some in the party see all of this as embarrassing or even divisive and damaging. But this squeamishness about internal conflict is a mistake. In fact, having a barney has been great for the Greens.
Firstly, for shallow reasons: it has generated a hell of a lot of media attention. In fact I’m not sure the Green Party has ever had so much coverage, particularly from the mainstream media. The Greens’ obsessive niceness has historically made the party boring to journalists. Polanski – the charismatic outsider running against the party establishment – is TV gold, and clips of his broadcast appearances do not infrequently go viral. Unsurprisingly, multiple broadcasters have held leadership hustings. The Today Programme aired a debate between Ramsay and Polanski in a slot usually reserved for grilling government ministers. National newspapers like the FT, the Times and the Telegraph have been forced to stop ignoring the party.
This media coverage has ratcheted up interest in the party among the wider public. July 2025 saw more Google searches for “the Green party” from UK users than any month in the previous 20 years. Meanwhile, the party’s membership has surged: while we won’t know exactly how much until the end of the contest, my educated guess based on information leaked to me from regional officers is that it’s passed 70,000. For a party that’s heavily reliant on member subs for its income (unlike the Tories and Labour, who have big donors and unions to fall back on), membership growth is likely to significantly increase the party’s resources and therefore its activities, likely leading directly to electoral gains.
Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Responding to the release of detailed proposals for Heathrow Airport expansion, Green Party MP, Ellie Chowns, reiterated the Green Party’s opposition to airport expansion, saying,
These expansion plans are, at their heart, aimed to deliver profit for shareholders to enable a small group of people to fly more and more. In the UK we have a few frequent flyers that make up less than 3% of the UK population but take 30% of all journeys. On top of this, they seem oblivious to the impact that these plans will have on the communities currently living around Heathrow. Government must be grounded in reality and look hard at the climate science. No credible net-zero plan can include rampant airport expansion, and it’s time Labour looked to the many, many alternative ways to create high-paid green jobs.”
Ellie Chowns, Green Party MP for North Herefordshire. CC image Wikipedia.
Reacting to today’s emergency cabinet meeting on Gaza and Keir Stamer’s statement, Green Party MP, Ellie Chowns, the party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, said:
“What Starmer has said today suggests Palestinian statehood is a bargaining chip, only to be awarded if the Israeli government fails to end the genocide in Gaza and agrees to a range of other conditions such as allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid and ending annexations in the West Bank.
“While these conditions are welcome and essential steps towards a ceasefire and a peaceful solution, they must not be an alternative to recognising Palestinian statehood. This is a cynical political gesture ahead of the outcomes of the UN Conference and suggests that if Israel were to comply with the demands, Palestinian statehood would be kicked down the road again, disenfranchising the Palestinian people.
“The Green Party calls on Keir Starmer to immediately and unconditionally recognise a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution, just as Labour promised to do in their election manifesto.”
“On this one, Labour have got it right. Giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote is a long-overdue step towards a stronger, more inclusive democracy. Young people have powerful voices and a vital stake in decisions about their future — it’s only right that they have a say at the ballot box.
But if Labour are serious about renewing our democracy, this must be just the beginning. We need to go further — that means scrapping the undemocratic House of Lords, and finally delivering proportional representation so that every vote counts.”
