The hypocrisy of the Greens’ Mothin Ali

One of the most striking policies of the Green Party of England and Wales is its plan to abolish private landlords. Party leader Zack Polanski had some particularly strong words for those individuals who buy council homes and then rent them back to tenants – a situation he called ‘totally unfair’ and ‘utterly incoherent’. Yet now it turns out that one of these hated private landlords is in fact one of the Greens’ very own deputy leaders, Mothin Ali.

According to various reports, Ali is the owner of two rental buy-to-let properties in his hometown of Leeds. He bought a three-bedroom former council house for £165,000 in June 2022. He then added a second investment to his portfolio in March 2025 – a property bought for £157,000. Both properties were bought through MA Holdings – Ali’s own limited company.

A spokesperson for the Green Party has said that Ali bought both homes ‘solely in the interests of vulnerable close family members for whom he has caring responsibilities’. That might be true, as indeed it likely is of many other private landlords. But it is hard to see how it exonerates Ali from the charge of hypocrisy. He is still the deputy leader of a party that deems private landlordism immoral.

It is worth pointing out that the Greens have been unequivocally opposed to private landlords, regardless of who is renting the properties. In March, Polanski said the ‘plan’ to get rid of private landlords would help end what he calls ‘rip-off Britain’. Previous statements by the Green Party have been similarly emphatic. At last October’s party conference, the Green Party ‘committed itself to phasing out private landlords from the housing system’. It has also pledged to end buy-to-let mortgages – the means by which, according to reports, Ali bought the two homes in question.

The latest revelation comes at a bad time for the Green deputy leader. Just last month, it was revealed that Ali had used taxpayers’ money to top up his income from Leeds City Council, where he has been a councillor since 2024. Multiple reports stated that, in May, £5,800 was allocated to Ali via the Leeds Green Group. According to The Times, he is alleged to have justified taking the cash on the grounds that the central party wasn’t ‘adequately supporting the leadership team’.

Apparently, Ali would be eligible to receive extra money if he took on additional responsibilities within the council. But, according to Private Eye, he only agreed to take on these extra responsibilities in August this year – that is, after the payment had been exposed by the press. Two Green Party councillors in Leeds have called for the money to be returned and for an investigation to be launched.

Still, we shouldn’t expect any of this to dent Ali’s prospects in the Green Party. After all, recent revelations that party leader Polanski falsely claimed to have been a spokesperson for the Red Cross and hadn’t paid council tax on his houseboat appear to have done no damage to his popularity among the party’s grassroots. And that’s to say nothing of Polanski’s former career, as someone who charged women for his services as a breast-enlarging hypnotherapist.

Besides, Ali’s financial conduct is the least of his sins. Let’s not forget that this is a man who led an online smear campaign against a rabbi, leading him and his family to seek police protection. Ali also described Hamas’s pogrom against 1,200 innocent people on 7 October 2023 as a ‘fight back’. And when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by US-Israeli airstrikes in February, Ali attended a rally in London to mourn his passing.

The media scrutiny over Mothin Ali’s various properties is welcome and deserved. His brass neck is visible from space. But there are far worse things than hypocrisy that Ali should be held accountable for.