The Greens’ shameless embrace of Islamic sectarianism

Appealing almost solely to Muslim voters might seem like a strange way for a major party to go about winning a by-election in Manchester. Producing adverts in Urdu, the native language of Pakistan, might be considered even odder. Yet, to prove that nothing is too strange for British politics in 2026, that is exactly what the Green Party has done in a recent campaign video.

‘Shopkeepers, drivers, cleaners, mothers – it is we who keep this area running’, a female narrator says in Urdu. Hannah Spencer, the Greens’ candidate for this week’s Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, then introduces herself in Urdu. ‘A cruel politician can win if we don’t vote Green to stop Reform’, the female voiceover continues. Pictures of Reform UK’s candidate, Matt Goodwin, appear at the bottom of the screen. ‘They want to break up our communities, deport families who have lived here for years, and tax people born abroad even more’, the ad continues. ‘They fuel Islamophobia and put our safety and dignity at risk.’

It isn’t just Reform the video targets. To ram home the message that the Greens are the only suitable party for Pakistani-heritage Muslim voters, it throws some punches in Labour’s direction, too. The video shows UK prime minister Keir Starmer and deputy prime minister David Lammy with Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu – the leaders of India and Israel respectively. It also shows footage of American ICE agents arresting immigrants and drone footage of the flattened Gaza Strip. Other snippets include Muslims in Manchester going about their daily tasks: one man is sweeping leaves on a street, another is standing behind the counter of what appears to be a vape shop, talking to a customer.

This video is not an aberration. The Greens, who many polls suggest could win the by-election, appear to be focussing their campaign on Manchester’s Muslim population – as high as 40 per cent in certain Gorton and Denton council wards – as well as the constituency’s large student and graduate population, for whom Gaza is the overriding concern. The result so far has been a brazenly sectarian campaign – an attempt to cleave the local population along ethnic and religious lines, using the faithful hatchets of the Gaza ‘genocide’ and alleged ‘Islamophobia’.

Green Party leaflets offer more evidence of these tactics. One shows Spencer wearing a keffiyeh and standing in front of a mosque. ‘Stop Islamophobia. Stop Reform’, the leaflet says in English. On the other side, in Urdu, the following words are printed: ‘Labour must be punished for Gaza… To give Muslims a strong voice, give your vote to the Greens.’ Another video, not apparently endorsed by the national Green Party, but made by a Green council candidate, says Muslims ‘must vote for [Spencer]’, as ‘she is standing with the Muslim ummah’ – that is, with Muslims worldwide. The social-media page of Green Party leader Zack Polanski has been notable in recent days for its unwavering focus on Palestine – pinning the blame for casualties in Gaza on the UK’s Labour government, for ‘supporting’ the supposedly ‘genocidal’ Israelis.

There can be little doubt that the Islamo-left marriage, which quickly ended in acrimony in Your Party, has been consummated in today’s Green Party. Indeed, the Muslim Vote – the organisation that helped propel four ‘Gaza independent’ candidates to victory in the 2024 General Election, has come out in support of Polanski’s outfit.

Just how beholden the Greens are to this bloc was made painfully evident in a recent debate between Spencer and Goodwin on the BBC. Goodwin asked Spencer what she thought was responsible for the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, when Manchester-born Salman Abedi detonated a nail bomb at an Ariana Grande concert, killing himself at 22 others. That Abedi was a jihadist is an uncontested fact. But, as Brendan O’Neill wrote last week on spiked, Spencer could not bring herself to get anywhere near the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Islamism’. Instead, she said, Manchester Arena was bombed because ‘people like [Goodwin] are dividing people’.

There’s little doubt the Gorton and Denton by-election is shaping up to be one of the most consequential of recent times. It hammers another nail in the coffin of the Labour-Conservative duopoly, and could potentially bring an end to Keir Starmer’s disastrously inept premiership. Disturbingly, it also looks set to entrench Islamic sectarianism as an undisputed force in British politics. The danger this poses to our politics and society should not be underestimated.

Hugo Timms is a staff writer at spiked.