How The Green Party GAINED Power in the UK (w/ Ash Sarkar)

Ajouté : 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]It was always going to be the case that the Green Party with an insurgent membership doing mass politics, pro Palestine, the anti-semitism bust was going to come around sometime, right? It it was it was inevitable. It worked so well um on tying up the Corbin project.

[00:00:19]Um you know, and I think that it's appealing to people's best instincts and not not their worst, right? It it's meaningful to people to be called racist. No one wants to be racist. So it it stops people in their tracks. Um so so you had that and then there were some you know a couple of sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes moments. So one moment was um there was a knife attack in a Jewish area of London called Golders Green. A mentally unwell man who first stabbed his Muslim housemate then went to Golders Green and stabbed two more individuals. and the police disarmed him by tasering him to the ground. He didn't let go of the knife and he was kicked in the head a couple of times and Zach Palansky retweeted a tweet which basically condemned the police for their use of force. Now, many people may disagree with me on this. Um, I didn't think that was an illegitimate use of force. Um, it was nonfatal. Our cops don't habitually carry guns. I'm very very grateful for that. Um, the man was arrested alive without permanent physical injury. And I would actually say this is an example of good policing.

[00:01:33]There's a marauding knife man. This is a good use of force. I don't think it's illegitimate for people to say I don't like to see police kicking people in the head under any circumstances. I don't think that that's an illegitimate point.

[00:01:44]The problem for Palansky is is that that man can hit retweet like he's a Formula 1 driver testing his reflexes. Right. so so quick and and he spends a lot of time on Twitter. I would say he spends too much time on Twitter which creates liabilities.

[00:01:59]>> The second problem is that you know anti-semitism bus comes around the scrutiny is insane right like and it's selective. So, on the one hand, you've got reform candidates um literally celebrating the racist rape of a British seek woman by a white racist because he thought that she was Muslim. He celebrated that online. He's a reform candidate. Um you know, you you you've got all sorts of of um shady operations in in reforms financing and that doesn't get the same prominence as, you know, randoms in the Green Party. Um, so the scrutiny is insane. It is also the case that the scrutiny is unfair and it is weaponized and there are some idiots and you're going to get some idiots because it's mass politics. So there was a a green candidate, council candidate who was arrested uh for allegedly sharing a Facebook post which said ramming a synagogue isn't uh I can't remember the exact word, but it's something along the lines of, you know, isn't terrorism, it's revenge. Um, >> which is [ __ ] idiotic, right? Like I just think it's it's >> should that have been identified by candidate vetting for the Green Party?

[00:03:20]Yes. Do I also understand that a party that is relatively new to doing politics at this scale is going to let through some numpties? Also, yes. Um, so those are the bits that I would say were sort of self-inflicted, which is the pressure is immense. The scrutiny is enormous.

[00:03:35]It's designed that no one can really come out smelling of roses afterwards.

[00:03:40]But these two particular liabilities, the candidate vetting and Zach Palansky spending too much time on Twitter, I think you can do something about that.

[00:03:49]But the not to be so reductive about this all, but the the Zack Palansky being Jewish doesn't help to I mean I I I as I say that, I obviously know that Bernie it didn't stop people from calling Bernie Sanders every name in the book. Um but still that's not insulating pe him at all against these accusations and also did people not learn anything from Corbin and in the context of Gaza where every criticism of Israel is being characterized as anti-semitism that hasn't sort of hipped people to the ways in which the anti-semitism charge is unfairly weaponized and made it a little less effective. Um so I would say there are yeses and there are nos. Um so uh first when it comes to Palansky being Jewish I mean like the way in which his Jewishness has been erased or even sort of cast espersions on has been like nothing short of disgusting. There's been anti-semitistic caricatures in like leading like broad sheet respectable newspapers like the Times and the Telegraph. Um, and he's also been accused of using his Jewishness as a shield um to try and uh deflect anti-ant anti-semitism accusations. So, >> well, only Zionists are allowed to do that, Ash.

[00:05:12]>> Well, exactly. And I think that this is a major difference between the United States and the UK, which is um you have in in the United States because there is a bigger Jewish population, there's also a there's more of a range of opinion on politics um you know thoughts about Israel that's reflected in community leadership. Now here obviously you've got a spread of opinion and the spread of politics um but when it comes to what's reflected in Jewish community leadership it is overwhelmingly if not absolutely entirely pro-Israel.

[00:05:50]So it's >> interesting. So there's not like Students for Justice in Palestine.

[00:05:55]There's not >> you've got >> those kinds of young people led organizations that are heavily um yep >> you've got you've got NAMOD um you know you you do have um organizations doing this but it's a lot more you know and I'm using scare quotes here it's a lot more acceptable to draw these boundaries which is well they're not really you know they're not really Jewish they can't really speak for Jewish people right and and that line that's being drawn is, you know, are you pro-Israel or not, right? Are you a Zionist or not?

[00:06:30]Like, that's being um cast as the dividing line between like, are you really Jewish or not? And that's that's the subtext that's playing out again and again. And that's what's been um you know, targeting Zack Palansky. And I again I just think that that was quite um foreseeable because under Jeremy Corbyn you actually had a lot of Jewish Labour Party members being expelled under anti-semitism and them trying to say well actually like I'm Jewish and like maybe I get to say certain things and maybe I get to criticize my own community in certain ways. That was not being um taken into account at all.

[00:07:10]Whereas, you know, um, both Jewish and non-Jewish people calling leftwing Jews self-hating Jews, apparently that's fine. Apparently, that's fine. Yeah. I I wonder I mean as someone who also has talked about and written a book on identity politics and the way that it's weaponized in all these perverse ways a hobby horse of my own I do wonder you know when you're in these moments I mean it's it's not the same thing as just doing plain standpoint epistemology like I you know no one can have a better opinion on black things than me because I'm black but there is something it does seem to I mean do I have any credibility at all with an argument that maybe the thing that I'm saying isn't about rooted in anti-blackness, but it's just a political idea because I have this sort of self-interest as a black person.

[00:07:55]Obviously, in this case, we're talking about Jewish people. Does it cause you to reflect at all about how we've been talking about and sort of minimizing the relevance of identity or let's not say minimizing but contextualizing the relevance of identity in these political conversations. Well, the thing is is that my argument has never been there is or can be no such thing as identity in politics. I'm just saying that it's a form of witness testimony and all witness testimony in a court of law is not automatically treated as the gospel truth. So that's my take which is just because you start a sentence with speaking as a doesn't mean that you're going to come out with [ __ ] and it doesn't mean that you're going to come out with gold. And I think that the particular issue in the UK is that you had a lot of, you know, quite right-wing individuals, you know, I'm saying right-wing on on Israel, um, who were invoking their Jewishness time and time again to say, well, I feel a sense of threat when there is an entirely peaceful protest through central London. And so that's sort of my point which is um you know I can't just say speaking as a Bengali it's raining outside. You still have the right to stick your head out the window and say whether or not it's true. Um you know we live in a shared reality. I think on the the second point you made which is what did people learn through corbinism. Actually what people feel they've learned is a variety of things. And I think that you know no idea is good all the time.

[00:09:28]And I think there is a place for people um saying actually what we've learned is that we've got to hold the line. Don't give an inch. I actually think that in some moments that's valid. I also think that there are times where the point which is like actually be smart, be sensitive, you know, be emotionally intelligent, there's a place for that as well. I think that if you come out with either one of these things all the time, hold the line no matter what. Like it's all a smear d you it is just like you're doing electoral politics, right? You're doing electoral politics, you have to win people over. I think that like if you come across as like I'm not letting in any new information whatsoever. It's you turn people off. I also think that if you go and anyone who is coming to me and saying they feel harmed like you know I have to give them all of my time. You also can't do that. I think what I'm advocating for is being strategic. Like I just I just think if you're a candidate who's um aboarded by the genocide in Gaza, but your response to that has been you're just sharing [ __ ] online all the time and your filter for good to share, bad to share has been degraded over 3 years of of witnessing a genocide. It's unstrategic. like it's unstrategic. You are going to >> It's really that online you're saying. I mean, and he's >> I'm not talking about Zack Palansky. I was talking about the other candidates like, you know, sharing stuff about like ramming synagogues and, you know, um 9/11 was an inside job and blah blah blah blah. Like, you're an unstrategic person. You can't be trusted with serious politics.

[00:11:04]>> Yeah. It's it's diff I mean the the difficulty is to your point the quote unquote other side is more often than not doing things like uh it's good for this seek woman to get raped right like and it is very difficult to I mean one of the lessons you could take from Donald Trump is that you never back down you never apologize and you win now that's not a moral lesson but it is potentially a correct political lesson >> uh and you know we're living in a time where we've We've gone from Michelle Obama's they go low we go high to everyone being like f that and celebrating the idea that we're chucking that out the window because I mean this is you know li liberals are saying we have to abandon that philosophy because we're losing too badly >> and for the left it feels like you're even more vulnerable. Zamadani has been going through this in New York >> where there's this constant balance of you know how much can I say about the synagogue that's selling illegally selling land in the West Bank and the protesters that are outside who are being characterized as anti-semitically protesting a synagogue instead of these illegal land sales and my chief of police my police commissioner who's a vocal and rabbid Zionist is the one cracking down on these individuals. I chose to keep her on and didn't fire her. And I'm negotiating the optics of me having you know given given um you know appeased the sort of Zionist faction and my administration by keeping Tishon but needing her to address the situation without doing violence against protesters who I ideologically align with but who are making an argument that is difficult to translate to the broader public because there's been so little media coverage of what even is the is the West Bank and what is an illegal land sale and how Israel has been violating international law for decades and it's just it's a lot to try to parse.

[00:13:03]>> Oh yeah, I think yeah, go ahead.

[00:13:05]>> You're totally right in that it's a lot to pass and I also think that different parts of the left have different jobs. I think it is my job as a journalist, as a writer, to make sure that our audience, which I want to be as big as [ __ ] possible, know about what's happening in the West Bank and that they know that it is a genocide and they know that Israel is not a state that just happens to be doing bad things. It is founded on the principle of ethnic supremacy, right?

[00:13:31]That's my [ __ ] job. Um, it is to change the minds of people on lots of issues. It is sometimes the job of a politician to change the minds of people on issues and sometimes it's the job of a politician to go for some easy wins that can bring the the most >> This is this is the question this is the the internal question because the argument could be made that Donald Trump defined the new contours of America American politics when he came in in opposition to the establishment Democratic party in sorry establishment Republican party in 2015 and started talking about things like no more endless war and lying to be clear. I'm not repeating this credulously, but I stand for no more endless wars and I'm sort of an economic populist and we got to do America first and all this stuff, right? And he was opposed by the establishment, the Republican establishment. He won anyway with like 30% of the vote. And then he remade the party in his image and really made issues like uh immigration principal issues for the party in a way that it wasn't really before. Whereas there was a there was a world 30 years ago where it was Republicans who were talking about open borders and left labor talking about the negative implications of that for the American worker. Right? Bernie Sanders famously.

[00:14:50]And so there there could be a lesson learned that says no, as a politician, it absolutely is your job to redefine the terms of debate and discussion that by not doing so, you're easily pushed into being framed as the party or the movement that is solely about certain identity or social issues that you're then fighting on their turf and that's why you always lose instead of >> imagine a Democratic party that was redefining the terms of debate away from immigration to oh, we're going to give you healthcare now. Actually, we are going to be against the Gaza genocide.

[00:15:20]Now, actually, >> you you you've helped me clarify something that I think and I love when that happens in conversations where you go, "Oh, it's clicked into place." I think what you're talking about with Donald Trump is leadership and discipline, right? So, he's showing the leadership and he's going like, I am not apologizing for what my principles are.

[00:15:38]They're principles, but he's never going to apologize for them. But then there's also discipline. It's like and you Republican party, I will [ __ ] every one of you and your mothers if you don't get in line behind me. I think when we're talking about the way in which the anti-semitism crisis and I'm again doing inverted quotation marks for that um plays out is that if you go all right well what we want is for um Zach Palansky to swing in behind everyone who says anything on social media is that you're actually in a tail wagging the dog kind of situation.

[00:16:12]>> Yes. And so what I want for Zach Palansky is to take up the space which is wide open, right? Like Israel is an aparttheid state that is committing genocide. Um two-state solution is cope, right? There is a one-state reality and it is an apartheid state. I want him to do that and to take that leadership. I also want him because I think it's easy to overdetermine from single issues. Um and and you don't want to do that on on Palestine as even as morally um important as it is. The number one issue even for Muslim voters in this country is not Gaza. It's cost of living. And that is the thing which a Muslim voter in the east of London has in common with a white and workingclass voter who's being tempted by reform in Hartley.

[00:17:00]Right? Cost of living is number one issue for both. You cannot lose sight of that. And then on the other side, I I look, I've tried to be as neutral as possible when I talk about party democracy. I don't believe in maximum party democracy. I am a Marxist Leninist at heart. I I believe in a degree of democratic centralism. And I I believe that one of the things that the left has lost sight of is the is the value of discipline and internal discipline, right?

[00:17:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. I I I take that point and obviously, you know, to me it's like there's front facing and there's sort of internal and obviously you should do the best to vet your candidates and and make sure you don't have to be putting out fires to begin with. But there's also this part of me that saw what happened to Bernie and saw that Bernie was being asked to apologize for every random flatsom and jetsum that tweeted a thing, right? It wasn't even things that were entirely outside of his control. It wasn't that he was hiring people that didn't that then said a bad thing. You know, there was some unforced errors that happened here and there, but the bulk of the sort of Bernie bro phenomenon that he was forced to answer for were randos on the Twitter anonymous accounts that he was repeatedly asked to disavow >> in bad faith. And I I totally agree like don't apologize for every single thing.

[00:18:14]This is not what I'm saying. I'm not saying apologize for every single thing.

[00:18:16]I'm actually talking about one, right?

[00:18:19]Prevention is better than cure. Vet your [ __ ] candidates. Look through their social media. If you have someone I Look, this is where I'm really coming out with my like most stylist opinion.

[00:18:30]Those like huge internal party WhatsApps which have like 500 people posting, shut them down. Make them admin only. No useful work happens in >> Look, I hear you, but also people themselves in the meeting.

[00:18:42]>> Republicans had that WhatsApp leak where they were fully doing hail Hitler memes and whatnot and nobody pay the fig.

[00:18:50]>> But it's not just that they're held to different standards. Wait a minute. Like we we say that a lot on the left. like it's unfair. Okay, whatever. It's unfair. But it's also about how it's handled. It's also about how it's handled. They're just like, I refuse to apologize. I refuse to fire anybody.

[00:19:04]It's not a big deal. Keep it pushing.

[00:19:06]And they just absolve themselves of any accountability. They just take accountability off the table. And I would I would point out, did you listen to the Tucker Carlson uh New York Times interview that was recently?

[00:19:17]>> I haven't yet. I haven't yet. I've got I've been on holiday for a month, so this is my >> No need to apologize for not having forcing yourself to endure like an hour plus interview of Tucker Carlson sitting down and talking with a a Zionist New York Times reporter. tough tough all around, but he manages to come off as the bigger person in a way that should frankly terrify a lot of people precisely because the interviewer was such bad faith when talking about uh Israel and Gaza, but also because when she brought up good points like why he seems to have no squeamishness or very little squeamishnessness about hosting and engaging with someone like uh uh Fuentes, Nick Fuentes without challenging him on any of his openly anti-semitic beliefs saying I love Hitler, right? This is not like an edge case. The guy is like, "Oh, I love Hitler." Uh, Tucker Carlson's strategy was to say, "Okay, so I was naughty. I guess you're saying I was naughty talking to this guy, but here are these bigger issues. Look at this genocide.

[00:20:19]Look at Palestine."

[00:20:20]>> Created jobs in the past 5 years have gone to foreign born. So like that's it's not an attack on the foreign born to say that's not really the job of the US government to provide economic opportunity to the world. the job is to protect its own people.

[00:20:33]>> I can tell you don't want to talk about Fuentes. Um, >> well, I don't I don't have a lot to say.

[00:20:37]Like, okay, he said naughty things about this, that, or the other thing. Okay.

[00:20:41]>> No. Well, you caused a big I'm focusing on you. This is an interview.

[00:20:45]>> You didn't cause anything. People got hysterical. How can you talk to this man? I talked to people onto your show.

[00:20:52]>> I've interviewed Ted Cruz, who's calling for the murder of innocents. I don't think Fuentes is doing that.

[00:20:56]>> But that conversation was pretty friendly. um you know say that I mean whatever okay I'm naughty for talking to Fuentes but >> but you've been doing this for decades.

[00:21:05]I mean I have watched you and your shows for a very long time and you obviously have a very savvy understanding of how to approach your interviews and how they're going to land.

[00:21:17]>> Um you know why >> I don't know about that but yeah >> well >> I don't think I'm that savvy. Maybe I'm underelling myself.

[00:21:27]I mean, why did you want to handle it the way that you did? Um, you know, you started with >> Well, I've explained this a million times, but I'll explain it very crisply.

[00:21:34]>> No, you started, you know, I noticed that >> talking about his background and where he grew up. It's a it's a different kind of interview than the one when I look at Ambassador Huckabe.

[00:21:45]>> I've known Huckabe for over 30 years.

[00:21:47]Huckabe's been a public figure for over 30 years.

[00:21:50]>> One was prosetorial. You were building a case. The other one was friendly. I mean you were wrestling quite vigorously with >> if I agreed with everything Fuentes said I would just say so I would just say so like there's no the the effort to kind of like divine my motives when I state my motives clearly I think I'm telling the truth >> I know but you as you have acknowledged let me just state my motives you use questions sometimes as a form >> if I could just state my motives and you can either believe me or not and I've done this many times but I'll do it once more >> and say I'd never heard of Fentes is I first heard him cuz he was attacking me and my family which enraged me. Um I did fall for the bait and uh so then I thought well should this guy seems like I keep hearing he's very influential. Let's have him on hear what he has to say. So I did that and on the question of hating Jews because they're Jews. I'm opposed.

[00:22:45]Told him that to his face. Lots of people decided that I should have taken a different tone. Okay. Do your own interview with Fontes if you want.

[00:22:52]that's okay with me. But I guess what I've come to believe I I didn't feel it was a significant interview, especially um on any level except the extent it was used to try and make me into a Nazi, which again I'm not. I would admit it.

[00:23:07]But what I think is interesting is the is the kind of moral scheme that that interview revealed, which not surprisingly is childish and kind of repulsive. And by moral scheme, I mean like what the people in charge, including in journalism, think is right and wrong. So I think anyone who calls for the murder of innocents or justifies them is the lowest possible person.

[00:23:35]There's nothing worse than that than killing kids.

[00:23:37]>> And it was shockingly effective. This is not a moral argument, right?

[00:23:42]>> The thing is, >> but it was shockingly effective. He reccharacterized what Nick Fuentes did and what he did in talking to Nick Fentes. It's just like a naughty little pecadillo that is so much less important than what someone like Mike Huckabe does and making the case for a religious war against Palestine. And he's not wrong about that part of it, right? The gravity of what these men have done.

[00:24:01]>> Yeah.

[00:24:01]>> But these are apples and origins or origins oranges. These are apples and oranges. Um party candidates are different from pundits. And I I you know I actually believe that like there is such a there is a real place for this like you know we're not getting into this guilt by association thing anymore particularly with punditry right like that's that's that's the new political norm. It has been tried to sort of um reframe bridge and you know move on to like the issue you really want to talk about.

[00:24:37]It's that's been tried like a zillion million times in the UK regarding the anti-semitism stuff and I think that there is a place for it. I'm not saying give that up. What I'm saying is that if you want to be able to steer a party with the membership of hundreds of thousands of people through it. What you have to do is one be like okay we are creating an internal culture of discipline and strategy. We are shifting away from litigating things through digital means whether that's WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter because everyone including myself will make a tit of themselves at some point right on these platforms steer them into meetings. It also means that the most um you know like we we've all done party politics, right? We've all seen the person who's like, yeah, they don't have great emotional intelligence. They're not particularly politically strategic, but they talk a [ __ ] lot, right? It minimizes the space where they can dominate. In these WhatsApp group chats, they can. Um and you have a thorough candidate vetting process. After that, after that point where you've set this internal culture of discipline, I'm not saying you move apologetically publicly. It's actually the opposite. These things enable you to go, you don't have to police our membership.

[00:25:56]You're doing this and you're subjecting us to a level of scrutiny that you don't subject anybody else to. And you're doing that because fundamentally you have corporate pay masters who don't want the rich to be taxed more, who, you know, don't want key utilities to be nationalized. Um, you know, the overall disposition of British media is pro-Israel, right? I would say that the the the window of common sense in the UK media is uh liberal Zionist. That's what you're trying to preserve. But you can only do those things when you're not getting sort of blindsided by, you know, someone who said something which which no one agrees with, right? Neither one of us agrees with the idea that you should ram a synagogue as as an act of revenge for what's been done in Palestine. I think it's a disgusting thing to say. Um, and and and my take on this is that I'm trying to steer this away from a moralizing place. I think when the left gets too moralizing, we we can make bad decisions. We need to hold our principles, identify what they are, understand what they are, and go right, let's move strategically. Doesn't mean triangulating. It just means how do we set ourselves up like to be really strong. Hey YouTube, thanks for watching. Just a reminder that this is a podcast. You can catch an extra premium episode every Monday for $5 a month at patreon.com/badfaithpodcast.

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