Nowhere did I suggest that the principle of being against child murder should be abandoned. Sanctions against Israel and critical support for the BDS movement are policies that are not contingent on the passing of a “Zionism is racism” motion, and can be justified on their own terms.
The media will always line up against a left-wing party (or anyone to the left of Thatcher), and part of the job of being a left-wing party is dealing with that, and not giving them easy wins. As much as I liked Corbyn and his policies, he was bad at his job because he could not engage well with bad faith actors. And you just have to be able to do that to win elections. Polanski is actually quite good at that, because he’s able to to bring a conversation back round to what he wants to say without looking like he’s avoiding questions.
Passing the Zionism is racism motion now is essentially the green party shooting itself in the foot with a shotgun. Almost every major Jewish organisation in the UK (the board of deputies and the Jewish leadership council for two) is explicitly Zionist - and to be clear, I think that’s bad, actually - and as a result are now going to denounce the green party as anti-semitic. And now Polanski is going to have spend time justifying that rather than getting his actual messages out while trying to fight a by-election.
Nowhere did I suggest that the principle of being against child murder should be abandoned. Sanctions against Israel and critical support for the BDS movement are policies that are not contingent on the passing of a “Zionism is racism” motion, and can be justified on their own terms.
The media will always line up against a left-wing party (or anyone to the left of Thatcher), and part of the job of being a left-wing party is dealing with that, and not giving them easy wins. As much as I liked Corbyn and his policies, he was bad at his job because he could not engage well with bad faith actors. And you just have to be able to do that to win elections. Polanski is actually quite good at that, because he’s able to to bring a conversation back round to what he wants to say without looking like he’s avoiding questions.
Passing the Zionism is racism motion now is essentially the green party shooting itself in the foot with a shotgun. Almost every major Jewish organisation in the UK (the board of deputies and the Jewish leadership council for two) is explicitly Zionist - and to be clear, I think that’s bad, actually - and as a result are now going to denounce the green party as anti-semitic. And now Polanski is going to have spend time justifying that rather than getting his actual messages out while trying to fight a by-election.