Did antisemitism cost the Greens at the local elections?

Did the Greens’ racist candidates cost them a majority in one of their top targets? The London borough of Lambeth could have been designed by a committee of sociologists (a profession well represented locally) as near-perfect territory for Team Polanski. But while the nose-ring count is high, the councillor count wasn’t quite high enough. The other fascinating thing about the Greens’ results in London is the almost total east-west split.

They utterly dominate Hackney and Lewisham After an excruciating counting process, lasting well into Saturday, the final tally in the would-be People’s Republic is Greens 28 – four below the number needed for outright control; Labour 26; Lib Dems 8. The Greens’ number on the council website is 29, but one of those new councillors, Saiqa Ali, is suspended by the party after her arrest last week for allegedly stirring up racial hatred following an investigation by The Spectator into her social media posts.

A second Green candidate who had her collar felt after our allegations over her social media content, Sabine Mairey, lost. The Greens only got one councillor in her ward. If they had managed all three, and not had to suspend Ali, they would only have been one short of the majority which most of the polls forecast for them in Lambeth. In a further three Lambeth seats, the Greens lost to Labour by 10, 17, and 17 votes respectively. In three more seats they lost to Labour by 36, 52 and 61.

It seems very likely that they would have won most or all of these seats, and a clear majority, without the candidate controversy. The Greens may well still run Lambeth as a minority administration, or in alliance if the Lib Dems are prepared to work with the Corbynistas – but they’ll be more vulnerable to rebellions, defections, splits or resignations. And in hard-left land there’s never any shortage of those. The other fascinating thing about the Greens’ results in London is the almost total east-west split.

They utterly dominate Hackney and Lewisham (where another of the extremist candidates, Rebecca Jones who called on people to ‘burn Zionism to the ground’, was elected). They won Waltham Forest from zero and came within one seat of a majority in Haringey, ousting the former council leader from her seat. Cue extensive burbling from BBC London about the ‘Greens’ fairy tale night…a new political era appears to have been written….nothing less than a political earthquake.’

Most popular But as the Beeb hasn’t spotted, West London, the capital’s middle-class heartland, full of liberal, environmentally-conscious Remain voters, is virtually a Green-free zone. Across the entire ten West and South-West London boroughs, with almost 3 million people represented by 556 councillors, the Greens have a grand total of nine councillors – actually a net loss of one from their position going into the election. As we noted yesterday, they lost all their councillors (some of whom were defectors from Labour) in Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington and Richmond.

They have one seat in Hillingdon and picked up a handful in Hounslow and Ealing. The schism in Green support between the West London middle class (older, wealthier, more private-sector) and the East London middle class (younger, poorer, more public-sector) could scarcely be greater. Perhaps there was an element of the liberal bourgeoisie rejecting the undercurrent of racism and hard-left nastiness in parts of the Greens. Probably more important, however, is that the progressive ardour of West London’s Waitrose belt was dampened by the Green’s plans for their wallets, with higher taxes on everyone earning over roughly £50,000.

On these results, at least, few of those with money, however liberal, want to vote for the new model Green Party and it simply hasn’t got the breadth of appeal that Labour used to have. That may well be profoundly helpful to the right, or possibly to the Lib Dems, if the Greens do conclusively eclipse Labour as the main party of the left.