Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Responding to the news that Labour are now publishing videos of police immigration raids, Green Party Co-Leader, Carla Denyer MP, said:
“This Labour government are plumbing new depths with their plan to broadcast footage of people being detained and deported. Those involved should be searching their consciences to ask if such breath-taking cruelty is really worth it all for the sake of aping the rhetoric of Reform. The bitter irony is that following Reform to the right on migration won’t win Labour any support – it will only lend legitimacy to Reform’s extreme views. It’s time this government showed a bit of backbone and told the truth – that migration is good for this country.”
MILLSTONE: Parts of the Labour Party see Nigel Farage’s Reform as worthy of emulation
You only have to look at the dire polling of Labour’s sister parties in Europe to see that aping the hard right on migration leads to spectacularly bad results, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
LABOUR is facing calls, both internally and from its enemies, that it should become even more anti-migrant in its policies and rhetoric in order to stave off the growing threat of Reform UK. This is a morally and politically bankrupt approach that will lead Labour to disaster.
If anyone doubts that, just take a look at some of the traditional left parties in Europe who have trodden that path, they have largely been reduced to a rabble.
The BBC reports that a group of “around 40 MPs” calling themselves the Red Wall group are calling in the government for a stronger message on immigration to stave off the electoral threat posed by Reform UK.
At the same time, there has been the proposed revival of the odious Blue Labour group with effectively the same aim. It has received a shot in the arm with the invitation of its ideological leader Maurice Glasman to Donald Trump’s inauguration. This is a direct foreign intervention in British politics and specifically into Labour politics as the Maga reactionaries try to reshape Western politics in their own image.
Labour has also decided to boost Reform UK’s advertising, by issuing ads which mimic their content and style on deportations.
THOUSANDS of people took to the streets of London over the weekend in a counter-demonstration against far-right supporters of Tommy Robinson.
The protest on Saturday demanding the release of Mr Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, heard Islamophobic chants such as “F*** your Islam” and “Allah, Allah, who the f*** is Allah.”
One speaker at the far-right demo said: “Round them up and kick them out,” and “Start the deportation programme for those who refuse to assimilate.”
It attracted an estimated 5,000 marchers, far smaller than the 25,000 at the last national march called by Mr Robinson in October.
In contrast, the counter-protest by Stand Up to Racism (SUTR), also about 5,000-strong and largely attended by young people, heard calls for unity from community leaders, campaigners and trade union representatives.
David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group spoke at the opening rally at St James’s Street, saying that anti-racists “have a job to do, not just to defend [minorities]” but to “expose the Robinsons and the [Reform UK leader Nigel] Farages to their own supporters as the self-centred grifters and exploiters they are.
“We won’t achieve that by simply saying racism is bad or screaming ‘Nazi,’ but by showing how racism ruins and destroys lives, how fascism exploits everyone for the benefit of an elite,” he said. …
Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, October 2022. Image: Bristol Green Party, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Green Party Co-Leaders, Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer released a joint statement ahead of President Trump’s inauguration saying:
“We must stand up for peace and democracy in what will be a dangerous turn toward right-wing populism in the wake of Donald Trump taking office.
“The antidote to Trump in the US, and the likes of Reform in the UK, is to offer people a real hope for real positive change that will transform their lives.
“That means a new offer to people beaten down by decades of low wages, insecure work, decimated public services and a realisation that the impact of the climate crisis is all around us in the form of floods, wildfires and a devastating loss of nature.
“We need the green investment to deliver the jobs of the future – well-paid, meaningful and secure – and we need the UK government to invest properly in schools and the NHS, and stand up for international law and human rights.
“A greener future is a more just and fairer future.
“The Green Party is clear – President Trump is a misogynist, a racist, a convicted criminal and, we believe, a fascist.
“We will be pressing the Labour government to recognise that to defeat fascism, political parties that believe in democratic values must work together to keep the flame of democracy alive and show people that democratic politics can deliver real change.”
Racism is central to Reform UK, but the party is also entangled with anti‑establishment fakery, climate change denial, transphobia, misogyny and pro‑corporate policies.
The anti-establishment fakery was on display last November, when Farage posted on social media, “Big business and big government work together. There is nothing about Sir Keir Starmer that represents change.”Adding to this already vile concoction of politics is misogyny and transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.
Farage likes to paint Reform UK as the insurgent force in British politics. He claims that Reform UK is “very much on the side of the little guy or woman”. Its MPs often denounce the two-party system and multinational corporations in favour of “real entrepreneurship”. This language is an attempt to mobilise the historic base of the far right, which has typically built among small producers and independent professionals.
But Reform UK is as establishment as it gets. Four out of the five Reform UK MPs—Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and Lee Anderson—are millionaires.
Its policies are a mish-mash of pro-corporate proposals. Tax cuts for business, austerity measures totalling £50 billion a year, a massive programme of deregulation, tax relief for private healthcare, abolishing inheritance tax for property under £2 million and scrapping net zero climate targets.
It’s clear the party stands for putting more money in the pockets of the bosses and the rich.
And it uses climate denial to drive further division. Deputy leader Richard Tice is one of the worst for this. At one point he stated “there is no climate crisis” and claimed “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.
Adding to this already vile concoction of politics is misogyny and transphobia. This was on display at Reform UK’s recent regional conference in Leicester, where Tice opened his speech with a transphobic joke about pronouns. The result is an over-arching package of the politics of division. This is hardly a surprise from a party whose senior members say they look to Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) and the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as inspiration.
