The Green Party could be in a worse position than Labour were under Jeremy Corbyn

The sight of the party’s main Jewish group being forced to plead to make the case for their concerns to be heard took me back to the days of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. There, like the Jewish Greens today, Jewish Labour members were ignored and cast as disloyal party members for even raising concerns, while the wider Jewish community – everyday people who don’t have the time to be engaged in party politics – looked on in horror and fear at what on earth was going on.

While, it is important to note, Greens for Palestine is not the Green Party’s leadership, it still boasts connections to them and some of the recently elected officials – who are now in senior positions in town halls and local government – still support the group.

The party’s own deputy leader, Mothin Ali, told the group that he was concerned about the number of suspensions in relation to antisemitism that were taking place and even urged members to consider legal action against the party in which he is the second most senior member.

This is the same deputy leader who hailed the “end of white settler colonialism” on October 7, and who hounded a Leeds University rabbi, Zecharia Deutsch – whose family were forced into hiding – after it had emerged that he had returned to Israel for reserve duties.

Ali labelled Deutsch a “creep” in a now-deleted video, adding: “That’s the only way I can describe him politely, is someone who went from Leeds to Israel to kill children and women and everyone else over there.”

Ali later apologised.

It was in 2015 at the moment that Jeremy Corbyn emerged as a leadership contender to succeed Ed Miliband in Labour’s top job that the JC asked awkward questions of him and the Labour Party. Questions about his past associations with unsavoury characters, his parliamentary career and on-the-record comments, such as those about his “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah.

But despite this, and the general chaos that Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party involved and the accusations that antisemitism in the party wasn’t taken seriously by the leadership, they did better than expected in the 2017 general election, eliminating the Conservatives’ majority and forcing Theresa May into a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party to stay in Downing Street.

There is an argument to be made that the situation in the Green Party is worse than it ever was in comparison to Labour under Corbyn.

In Labour, there was a vocal parliamentary party that didn’t agree with the leftward direction of the party, and Corbyn’s factional rivals who attempted to organise against him internally.

In the Green Party, candidates who make suspect comments on social media are in positions of power in local authorities.

In the case of Mark Adderley, a Croydon councillor (and husband of Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha) who is suspended by the party nationally, the local Greens on the council created their official group – the Greens and Independents – which allows him to sit with his former party comrades.

There doesn’t seem to be a sizeable opposition to Polanski within the Green Party – both internally organising or MPs willing to enthusiastically disagree with him in public. His rivals, as I’m sure there are some, know to keep their heads down.

But, in the case of Jewish Greens, they expressed their disagreement behind closed doors.

This is, on some level, understandable. The Green Party is enjoying unparalleled levels of success – both in the opinion polls and at the ballot box – under Zack Polanski’s leadership and the populist direction he has taken the party.

Though the comparisons with Corbyn aren’t like for like, there, it took a national security event – his limp response to the Russian poisonings in Sailsbury – for concerns over him to cut through to the ordinary public.

We caught a glimpse of something similar with the revulsion about Polanski’s comments on social media questioning the police’s use of force to disarm the knife-wielding terrorist who was attacking people in Golders Green.

Since the election, Polanski is, as ever, keen to opine about Israel. But more questions will be asked about whether normal and legitimate criticism is turning into an unhealthy obsession.

The papers we reveal make clear how uneasy Jewish Greens were at the motion to brand Zionism as racism, something Polanski himself previously said he was minded to support.

Given the motion could well be debated again at the party’s annual conference in October, there is no indication that their worries are being eased.

The Green leadership must heed the warnings and act now, otherwise – remembering the length of the Labour crisis under Corbyn – there will be concern that what lies ahead is years before the party is perceived to be safe for Jews, if ever at all.