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Members elected two local councillors as co-deputy leaders. Cllrs Mothin Ali and Rachel Millward will serve alongside new leader Polanski.
Millward is co-leader of Wealden District Council in Sussex, while Ali is the first Green councillor to represent the diverse, working-class Gipton and Harehills ward in Leeds.
He made ensuring the Greens become a more “working class” party – and shedding its middle-class image – central to his leadership bid. We caught up with him shortly after his election.
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Josiah Mortimer: Congratulations Mothin. How are you feeling?
Mothin Ali: Very excited. It’s really positive…There’s hope there.
Josiah Mortimer: You stood on a left-wing, working class platform. You must be encouraged by the fact that Polanski was elected – particularly over his perhaps more moderate opponents?
Mothin Ali: Adrian [Ramsay] and Ellie [Cowns] and Zack bring individual qualities. They’ve got different approaches. Zack is very similar to me in our messaging, so there’s a natural connection there. It’s exciting.
Josiah Mortimer: How do you envisage working together? What do you see changing in the Green Party over the next year or so?
Mothin Ali: We’re going to be a lot more assertive in our approach. Greens are genuinely really nice people, and one of the things about being really nice people is we often avoid confrontation. What we haven’t done in the past is take the fight to Labour, take the fight to Reform, and I think that’s what we’re gearing up for. We’ve got people who are assertive, but also people who can put their message across in a coherent way and in a language that resonates with ordinary people.
Josiah Mortimer: Do you think Greens have been too ‘nice’ traditionally?
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Mothin Ali: I’m not going to say that. Greens originate in the Quaker movement and the Quaker movement is always about – we can talk until we find a solution. I like that approach. I’ve used that personally with people who I disagree with, especially on the right, when I’ve been out door-knocking or campaigning. We might not agree on everything, but let’s get talking, at least we understand each other, and even when we disagree, we can disagree with respect.
Josiah Mortimer: A key part of your platform was boosting the Greens among working class people. What are your plans there, and why does it matter to you?
Mothin Ali: The Greens have always traditionally been quite southern-focused and quite middle class. Working class communities, whether they’re ethnic minority communities or white working class communities, have been taken for granted by, traditionally, the Labour Party. A lot of industrial towns have just been forgotten about. That’s not mainly down to Labour – that goes all the way back to Thatcherism, closing down coal mines and not replacing those jobs. We’ve got generations of worklessness, people who have been forgotten.
We’ve got people who’ve always voted Labour, always supported Labour, but have been taken for granted. What we really need is real political hope, and we need people who won’t be manipulated by charlatans like Farage and Rupert Lowe and these snake oil salesmen.
They take complex problems and wrap them up and say, “Oh, it’s the fault of immigrants. It’s the fault of Muslims. It’s the fault of black and brown people. These are the ones you should be angry at,” when really, whether it’s ethnic minority working class communities or white working class communities, the problems are very similar. We’ve got poor quality housing. We can’t pay our bills. We can’t get access to good education. Our schools are struggling. We can’t get access to decent healthcare.
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Our problems are very similar. Instead of directing our anger towards the people at the top, the people at the top are trying to cause division amongst us. What we need to do is unite. Right now, the Greens, with this force that we’ve just elected, can really push our message to ordinary people.
Josiah Mortimer: The past few weeks have obviously seen protests against asylum seekers… Do you feel like now is a scary time to be a non-white Brit? Have you experienced an increase in racism?
Mothin Ali: I’ve seen others experience it and I have experienced it myself. I saw a nurse – I think she was from the Philippines – who was attacked in a park by a couple. There was a Sikh taxi driver who was attacked. There were masked men in balaclavas marching through shopping centres. It goes beyond just waving flags. It’s the whole climate of toxicity.
I represent one of the most diverse wards in the country. We have a community spirit. I had 18 and 19 year olds stand with me and help me stop the riots in our area last summer. That’s patriotism. That’s community spirit.
I was on holiday last week [28th August]. We were on a beach in Cromer – it was an absolutely beautiful day. The water was crystal clear. I was having fun with my family, my children. We were catching shrimp with my six-year-old, building sandcastles and making a little pond for the shrimp to swim in.
As we’re picking rocks out of the sea, we hear “get out of our country,” and we see beer bottles being thrown at us from the top of the pier. I get my wife and children, we start walking back to where we’ve put our stuff and start packing up. I noticed those same people walking down from the pier, down the promenade, standing at the top shouting down “P*ki bastards.”
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Josiah Mortimer: That makes all these conversations about identity and culture wars very real to you. What or who is to blame?
Mothin Ali: Cromer is close to Great Yarmouth where Rupert Lowe [MP] is based. All we have to look at is his timeline on Twitter. Every single day it’s ‘immigrants this, Muslims that, send them back, deport them’. He might have even asked for me to be deported. He’s put a couple of posts out about me.
Josiah Mortimer: It feels like it’s open season on that kind of rhetoric now, doesn’t it?
Mothin Ali: You’ve got Nigel Farage doing something very similar, the UKIP leader Nick Tenconi too. I’m sure he did say that he wants to deport me.
Then you’ve got folks on the street like Tommy Robinson, so there’s real toxicity being created.
But then you find Keir Starmer saying, “this country is becoming an island of strangers.” [Starmer has since said he regrets using that language].
I would welcome Keir Starmer to walk into our community. The world that I represent is one of great community spirit. People in our community who cook food in their own houses and then take them out and give them to people who can’t afford food. That’s patriotism.
Josiah Mortimer: That’s the contrast really, isn’t it? When you ask these people who are hurling abuse and even putting up these flags what they love about this country, I’d imagine many would struggle to answer. They’d only talk about things they dislike. But you’re quite clear – you’re a patriot because you love that community spirit you see around you. Is that fair to say?
Mothin Ali: Absolutely. I love that community spirit, but I also recognise there are serious problems. Because I love my community so much, I put my name on a ballot. I stood up, took part in the system, and said, “Look, I want to make changes for the people that I represent.”
Just coming back on that racism issue: I’ve experienced racism since my election, in peaks and troughs. Normally, when there’s a media story about me, there’s a big pile-on, then it dies down, then there’s something else, then another pile-on.
In the last couple of days, some of the right-wing media have been quite irresponsible in their reporting, and there’s already a huge pile-on again, including calls for my deportation. Someone even sent me a message threatening to rape me before they chop me up and feed me to pigs.
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Josiah Mortimer: And this is stemming from hostile media coverage, you think?
Mothin Ali: Yes. There’s a peak happening right now. They put these narratives out and then these messages come.
The Daily Mail said there was pressure on Zack to sack me straight away [over comments at his council election]. That’s a members’ decision. They don’t know how democracy works.
The Express did something very similar. The Telegraph did too on their podcast, and TalkTV. All trying to paint me as some kind of Muslim extremist. The first thing I said after my election victory was that it’s a victory for the local people.
Josiah Mortimer: But what you said after – about your election being a victory for the people of Gaza [and shouting ‘God is great’ in Arabic]: you’ve told me that was a reaction to a defeated councillor pushing your wife?
Mothin Ali: I have to be careful about what I say, but it was very tense, very emotional.
[Afterwards] everyone was talking about what [was] said without the context.
But you can dedicate something to anyone you want. I was dedicating my election to people who are suffering. What’s wrong with that?
Josiah Mortimer: Is much of this follow-up abuse coming on X?
Mothin Ali: Yes. Twitter is absolutely horrible right now. It is the worst place. But one of the good things is the Green Party has come out strongly in support for me, and I’m really proud of that.
Josiah Mortimer: A handful of politicians have left X as a result of this kind of abuse. Is that something you’re thinking about?
Mothin Ali: There are people who have messaged me to say, “Look, I don’t agree with your politics, but I respect what you’re doing.” There are people who change their minds because they can see the work I do. They can see what I’m really about. For people who might be teetering on the edges, I think any platform that allows you to reach people and get your message across, we’ve got to use it. We can’t just walk away.
Josiah Mortimer: But it’s a heavy price to pay if you’re getting racist abuse all the time.
Mothin Ali: It is.
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Josiah Mortimer: Let’s discuss Jeremy Corbyn’s and Zarah Sultana’s plans for a party. Are you happy to work with this new left party that’s emerging?
Mothin Ali: I’m a Corbyn fan, and I think many people on the left are Corbyn fans. Whenever you have people who have a long legacy, there’s always something you can admire about them.
I’m disappointed that they set up a new party, because there are exciting things happening in the Greens right now. Everything they’re replicating over there [in Your Party] is being done here. They’re trying to replicate what we’re working towards. I’m disappointed they went their own way, but now that they have, I worry about splitting the left vote.
There are going to have to be conversations and discussions around how we work together. That has to happen.
Josiah Mortimer: That would involve not standing in areas where the other is maybe strongest?
Mothin Ali: Right now, it’s too hard to say. We’d have to find a way of working together. We’d have to have those discussions. Joint tickets are probably the easiest solution.
Josiah Mortimer: So you’d both stand together – it would be the ‘Green-Left Party’ or similar on a ballot?
Mothin Ali: Yes, like the Labour and Co-operative Party. That’d be one of the easiest solutions, and it would keep everyone happy that way. No one would have to stand back for anyone.
Josiah Mortimer: You’d still have to decide between you who the candidates would be in each seat, which might be tricky?
Mothin Ali: Completely. But let’s wait and get to that point..
Josiah Mortimer: Maybe it’s not too late for Corbyn and Sultana to say, actually, the Greens are heading in a new direction – and unite before this new party is formed?
Mothin Ali: That would be amazing. There’s so much we could do together.
Josiah Mortimer: Thanks for speaking to Byline Times.
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