The UK Green Party has undergone an ideological transformation that has accelerated under leader Zack Polanski, with antisemitism, Islamist influence, and electoral opportunism increasingly shaping its political direction, its former deputy leader Shahrar Ali told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Tuesday.
Ali warned that the changes are no longer simply an internal Green Party matter, but pose a danger to wider British society.
“When a political party, any political party that has de facto power, gets into positions of influence, and that gets subverted and corrupted beyond recognition, it’s a danger to society.”
Ali has been a member of the Green Party for “the best part” of 20 years. He served as deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2014 to 2016, and as the party’s policing and domestic safety spokesperson in 2021.
Ali has a history of disciplinary disputes with the party. In 2022, he launched legal action against the Greens over alleged discrimination concerning his gender-critical beliefs, later securing a ruling that his dismissal had been procedurally unfair and that he had been subjected to “unlawful discrimination.”
He was excluded from the party for two years in September 2024 over comments on the same issue, and was suspended again on October 7, 2026, following his condemnation of the “Zionism is racism” motion and his calls for voters not to support the Greens.
For Ali, these “weaponized disciplinary processes” indicate increasing extremism within the party. “I was criticizing the motion long before the time it was passed, way back in spring, when it first reared its ugly head at the Spring conference,” he told the Post.
A party transformed under Polanski
Ali told the Post that the current radical approach taken by the Greens has “accelerated to devastating effect, particularly since Polanski became leader of the party.”
While he said it was “in gestation, even prior to that,” the culture of the party has predominantly shifted since autumn 2025, when the Jewish leader took over.
“The authoritarian drift and the rot, it’s set in more deeply from Polanski’s tenure as leader. Now we’re seeing the old guard like Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay, and also some of the MPs, notably Ellie Chowns, getting far more agitated around the direction of the party. But it’s too little too late, unfortunately.”
Ali attributed much of this transformation to the rapid expansion of the party’s membership and what he described as a failure to scrutinize the political beliefs of those joining.
“During the last 12 months, the party’s seen a huge increase in membership but a corresponding lack of control regarding who is entering the party and why. There are a lot more pro-Palestine campaigners, Corbynista types who were kicked out of the Labour Party because of antisemitism.”
Ali said he thinks the shift to more overt antisemitism in the Green Party is two-pronged: one is the actual ideologues of the party who are strongly anti-Israel and often antisemitic; the other is a political ploy to take voters from the Labour Party and to secure support from Muslim voters, including those he believes hold Islamist views in the UK.
He cited the example of Hannah Spencer, who won the Greens’ first-ever parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton earlier this year, with major Muslim support. Her winning campaign was heavy on Gaza messaging.
However, Ali thinks the issue is more endemic than that.
“Unfortunately, the membership and the activist base has also changed,” he told the Post.
“I do think we’re dealing now with ideological zealotry of a very ugly sort, where members, some of whom may self-identify as Muslim, have extreme views around Israel and the right of Jews to a homeland.”
While he said it is difficult to put a figure on it, he thinks a large number of members and councilors have been resigning or threatening to resign as a result.
The controversy has also raised questions about Polanski’s own position on Israel.
Asked by the BBC on Friday whether he believed Israel has a right to exist, Polanski refused to say.
Other members have been more overt, calling for the end of the Jewish state. “They’re not going to get disciplined, I’m sure. Whereas I’ve been disciplined for criticizing the motion,” Ali said.
He said this is no longer a purely party-related issue but a much bigger issue involving wider politics and society.
“The Green Party has had an absolute blind spot; I think I’ve been quite vocal about it, including Polanski, around the exponential rise of antisemitic hatred in this country, in the UK, which is horrific. They hardly say anything about it, or next to nothing about it. I think they’re in complete denial about the impact of their campaign upon the rise of antisemitic hatred.”
Islamism and the Green Party's changing identity
Ali also spoke about the issue of Islamism in the party, which is now in the strange place of “both attracting Muslims and targeting Muslims.”
He argued that the problem extends beyond the party’s stance on Israel, describing what he sees as an erosion of its traditional eco-focused secular identity.
He cited Mothin Ali, the Green Party’s deputy leader.
“I’ve never once heard him criticize Islam. And that’s a problem. I think that is the beginnings of Islamism. The reason it’s Islamism is because it means the religion is beyond reproach, irrespective of the fact that it keeps popping up in the news cycle in ways which are directly relevant.”
“So what we’re ending up with is a party which is no longer occupying a secular space – where all religions and the non-religious are equal. It now seems to be promoting a Muslim agenda.”
Ali said that this is evident with respect to the Middle East.
“The Greens are going out of their way to target Muslim voters on Palestine issues, who have a kind of visceral reaction to the suffering of the Palestinian people, but this is to the exclusion of the suffering that’s happened to Israelis and Jews on and since October 7”
“The complete absence of sympathy, empathy, or compassion for innocent Jews is just staggering.”
Can Gaza-focused campaigning continue to deliver votes?
The key question here is, will the Greens’ strategy of Gaza-centric politics pay off? The party didn’t win the by-election seat in Holborn and St. Pancras on October 8 (just days after the controversial motion passed), but nevertheless made gains compared with previous years.
Ali told the Post that “it could go either way.”
“Many traditionally-Green voters will recoil at voting for the Greens. So they will lose a lot of support. And I can think of a couple of MPs who probably at the moment would lose their seats.”
“But what the party’s gambling on is that there are enough young cosmopolitan activists who are sufficiently misguided in various cities and towns, and students who will still vote for this antisemitic party. And so that’s just profoundly dangerous. So the extremists in the party are probably calculating that they actually want to carry on with this strategy.”
The Post pointed out that only around 1% of the party’s membership voted in the conference last week, and suggested that it is possible that the other 99% would have voted down the “Zionism is racism” motion.
Despite this, Ali does not believe the result necessarily misrepresents the wider party.
He argued that the party’s membership had increased dramatically under Polanski and that the motion could still pass if put to a wider membership vote.
“I do think the activists often represent the critical mass of the membership. For every activist, there’ll be other voters who are influenced by those activists.”
Why did senior Greens wait to speak out?
Ali also expressed skepticism over why, only after the failure to secure the by-election seat, did several senior Greens come out to voice their concerns about the “Zionism is racism” motion, as well as extremism in their party.
He suggested that the timing of their criticism reflected political calculations rather than principled opposition to the motion.
“If Polanski had won the by-election, it’s unlikely that there would have been furore around the motion. I interpret it more as they’re only objecting strongly now because they can see it can cause the party electoral damage. That is very concerning.”
When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Green Party told the Post that “Mr. Ali is entitled to his views but is no longer a member of the party. We are proud to be a party that bravely stands up for some of the most vulnerable people in the world.”