Andrew Gilligan

‘Our Andy’ is, of course, Manchester – and Manchester is, of course, him. In recognition of that, no worshipper at the Church of Burnham is more devoted than the city’s local paper, the Manchester Evening News. On May 9, two days after the local elections, the MEN’s front-page splash headline was ‘Cometh the Hour,’ over a montage of a smiling, hands-in-pockets Burnham, Union flags fluttering behind him, Parliament and a map of the UK in the background. Under Reach ownership both the MEN and the other great north-west paper, the Liverpool Echo, have become mouthpieces for the region’s political elites ‘Andy Burnham’s name carries a particular kind of affection in Greater Manchester.

The wheels have come off the Brexit bus. The Spectator is grieved to report that the famous red 'Vote Leave' coach, E14 ACK, which drove Boris Johnson and the editor of this magazine to campaign stops around the country, failed its MOT last month. When tested, it was found to have 'major defects' requiring a 'repair immediately'. Several of the coach’s suspension components had 'deteriorated' and there was also corrosion in the chassis. Almost exactly ten years since the referendum, and with over half of voters now believing Brexit was a mistake, the metaphors write themselves. But Remainers should not be too gleeful. In a late result, the coach has been fixed and is back on the road after a retest.

One of the under-reported stories of the local elections is the steady growth of Muslim independents. Including Lutfur Rahman’s Aspire in Tower Hamlets, east London, at least 100 such councillors were elected last week, adding to the dozens already in place and the four independent Muslim MPs elected in 2024. What links has this new “Islamopopulist” movement to Islamism and other ideologies hostile to democracy? Or is it actually a sign of belief in democracy, people organising in a normal civic manner to advance their interests like other groups before them?

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.

Saiqa Ali, the woman who allegedly said that Donald Trump is 'owned by Jews', became a Lambeth councillor yesterday, elected under the Green party banner. Like so many celebrated liberation activists before her, Cllr Ali has gone from police custody – she was arrested last week for stirring up racial hatred – to public office, though her story may not end quite as happily as, say, Nelson Mandela’s. But then Mandela never allegedly posted pictures of the Earth crushed by a giant serpent with the Star of David on its skin, or allegedly wrote 'Long live the resistance' next to a picture of what looks like a Hamas terrorist. Or, for that matter, allegedly opined that 'England has a government overrepresented with Zionists Jews'.

A Green candidate at tomorrow’s election has called the UK a ‘terrorist state,’ blamed Jeremy Corbyn’s demise on the ‘web of lies Israel released on him’ and reposted a claim that Israel has ‘captured’ Britain’s Department for Education. Batchford is, by my count, the 24th Green candidate at tomorrow’s election to be exposed for expressing extremist views specifically related to Jews, ‘Zionism’ or Israel Marc Batchford is one of a cluster of Green candidates in Walsall with extreme views. Another, Raja Ateeq, described Jews as ‘cockroaches’.

A Green candidate in this week’s council elections says the White House should be blown up, described Hamas taking ‘filthy hostages,’ and denies that anyone was raped by the terror group on 7 October. ‘I hope Iran can destroy Israel and leave no-one there,’ writes one member of the group. Shahin replies: ‘Iran should hit the Whitehouse. It is the headquarters for evil’ Feda Shahin, a Green candidate in Bournemouth, was first exposed – for different extremist statements – by The Spectator on 21 April. We disclosed she had said that ‘the Zionists killed 20 million Christians’ and that ‘Zionists are trying to control the world.

On subjects related to Jews, Zack Polanski, Mothin Ali and the other political children in the new Green party have been playing with fire. They are now starting to learn that fire is hot. One week before the local elections, two of the Greens’ candidates for a key target council, Lambeth, spent yesterday in police custody. As revealed by The Spectator, one, Saiqa Ali, posted that Donald Trump is ‘owned by Jews’, depicted the world being crushed by a giant serpent with the Star of David on its skin, and appeared to honour Hamas, among many other horrors. The other, Sabine Mairey, promoted a video saying a terror attack on a synagogue ‘wasn’t anti-Semitism’, but ‘revenge’ against Israel.

‘Back us to stop the far right,’ say the Greens. But what if parts of the Greens are the far right? Saiqa Ali, a Green candidate in next week’s elections for Streatham St Leonard’s, Lambeth, posts on her Instagram account a picture of the Earth suffocated by a giant serpent with the Star of David on its skin. She thinks that the British government includes too many ‘Zionists Jews’, and that Donald Trump is ‘owned by Jews’. Not even the Z-word, that last one. Not even Israel. Just… Jews. Ali also posts a picture of an armed man in what looks like a Hamas headband, captioning it: ‘Long live the Resistance.’ If it is a Hamas headband, this may actually be a criminal offence.

A Green candidate who is also a GP has repeatedly attacked ‘Zios’ and called on people to ‘burn Zionism to the ground.’ Rebecca Jones, a vegan activist and NHS doctor, is standing for the Greens in Blackheath, where she lives. She has the personal support of the party leader, Zack Polanski. She posted a video of someone reading the purported last will and testament of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 attacks. Her view: ‘This is so beautiful’ Jones says on her Facebook page, ‘The Vegan Doctor’: ‘I’ve often said that Zios seem to use doublethink and doublespeak a lot… I’m still amazed by the way they, the media and the colonialists try to make us believe that anti-zionism [is]….extreme.

A Green Party council candidate in Bournemouth says "the Zionists killed 20 million Christians” and are “trying to control the world.” Feda Shahin, who is standing for the Central ward on Bournemouth town council, leads a group which caused significant national controversy by picketing the family home of the town’s then Tory MP, Tobias Ellwood, in February 2024. This ridiculous claim appears to be based on the fact that some leaders of the Russian revolution, such as Trotsky, were Jewish The Palestine Solidarity Movement, a local Bournemouth-based activist group, organised about 80 people to mass outside the MP’s house after dark, chanting: “Tobias Ellwood, you can’t hide, you signed up for genocide.

A terror attack on a synagogue was “not anti-semitism” but was “revenge” for Israel “murdering people,” according to a video promoted by a Green Party council candidate. Sabine Mairey, a Green candidate for Clapham Town ward in Lambeth, south London, posted the video, by David Spevak, an American Jewish anti-Zionist, on her Facebook page last month. It’s still there at the time of writing. As so often with the Greens, one community appears to be left out of the care and inclusion offer Mairey was used by the Lambeth Green Party to launch its election manifesto this week, and is quoted in the party’s press release. The video on her Facebook page is posted with the caption “Ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-semitism. It’s revenge.

The extremism of some in the Green party is increasingly being compared to Labour in Jeremy Corbyn’s time. But there is a critical difference. Most of the haters in Corbyn Labour were ordinary activists. In the Greens, they are likely to become holders of public office with real power. Earlier this week, we brought you Ifhat Shaheen, a Green council candidate in the highly-winnable ward of Stoke Newington, who defended the October 7th attacks, suggested that Israel is harvesting organs from Palestinians ‘to help alter [the] DNA of Zionists to claim land,’ and asked whether ‘Zionist funding’ was behind the racist Tommy Robinson marches.

The Green party’s embrace of extremists is gathering pace. Let me introduce you to Ifhat Shaheen (also known as Ifhat Shaheen-Smith or Ifhat Smith), who is likely to become a Green councillor in Hackney next month. Shaheen has been selected in Stoke Newington ward, possibly the wokest place in Britain. It already has one Green councillor, who’s stepping down, and it would be fairly surprising, given Labour’s collapse, if there were not three after the election. But the voters of Stokey – which is right next door to London’s biggest Orthodox Jewish area – should perhaps know more about Shaheen’s stance on ‘Zionists’ and other subjects before they make up their minds.

Last year I obtained a leaked copy of the new government’s ‘counter-extremism sprint’. It caused a huge political backlash – and was disowned by ministers within hours – for saying the UK’s approach to extremism should no longer be based on ‘ideologies of concern’, such as Islamism, but on a very wide range of ‘behaviours’, including misogyny, violence against women and spreading conspiracy theories. Fourteen months later, we risk sliding back into the same folly. In a report this week, the Commons’ home affairs select committee says Britain’s ‘failure to move on from a counter-terror mindset’ has made Prevent, the main counter-extremism programme, ‘outdated’, and ‘left the country ill-prepared to deal with new forms of extremism’.

Even by its own recent standards, the latest investigation from the anti-extremism group Hope not Hate was fabulously, joyously, Rizla Micron-thin. People with “a broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies,” Hope not Hate “can reveal,” meet in rooms in Westminster. It’s not quite clear what Hope not Hate sees as the actual problem here That’s it. It’s not quite clear what Hope not Hate sees as the actual problem here. Should people with a broad opposition to liberal orthodoxies only be allowed to meet in, say, caves? Or is it the Westminster bit that’s the difficulty? Would it be all right for them to meet in rooms, so long as the rooms were in, for instance, Perivale?

Not worried enough yet by the government’s new definition of 'anti-Muslim hostility'? Here’s another red flag: the mild, nuanced, or downright supportive responses it’s received from some of the worst people in Britain. In the week or so since the definition was published, I’ve been tracking reactions across British Islam’s vast cosmos of professional offence-takers and grievance-mongers – sorry, diverse’n’vibrant civil society groups. Take Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), the organisation which has, in the past, suggested that Britain 'treats all Muslims as criminal.

The government’s new official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ is 144 words long. But in a sign that even ministers now realise what a mess they have made, it is followed by a further tortuously pleading 1,400 words which ‘must be read together’ with it. You will be relieved to hear, according to this ‘accompanying text,’ that the definition is no threat at all to ‘the fundamental right of every person in the UK to exercise freedom of speech,’ or to ‘academic and political discussion,’ or to ‘criticisms of religion or belief,’ or to ‘debates in the public interest.’ If this were not a threat to free speech, the government would not need to say so To which I reply: qui s’excuse, s’accuse (he who excuses himself, accuses himself).

Some things in the government’s leaked social cohesion strategy will be deeply neuralgic to many. There is the creation of a “special representative on anti-Muslim hostility,” which will almost certainly hand an official bully pulpit to an activist such as Baroness Gohir, who has attacked media coverage of the grooming scandal as “disproportionate” and being “used…to fuel racism and Islamophobia,” or to a figure such as Dominic Grieve. The leaked strategy is clear that Islamism is the country’s greatest extremist threat There’s a claim that last summer’s widespread flying of English, Scottish and Union flags were “tools of hate” and the “misuse [of] national symbols to exclude or intimidate.