Green Party announces expelled Labour Party councillor as prospective parliamentary candidate
The Green Party has announced that Jo Bird, a controversial expelled Labour Party councillor, has been selected as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Party.
A post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for the Wirral Green Party read: “We’re pleased to announce our Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Birkenhead, Cllr Jo Bird. #JoBird4Birkenhead #GetGreensElected”.
Cllr Bird then retweeted the post and wrote, “Birkenhead deserves better,” before continuing to list various policy issues.
Cllr Bird, who re-joined the Labour Party in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was running for the Party’s leadership, has a long history of controversy relating to Jews, including renaming ‘due process’ in the Labour Party as “Jew process”, for which she was suspended; supporting the expelled Labour activist and friend of Mr Corbyn, Marc Wadsworth, who was thrown out of the Party after a confrontation with Jewish then-MP Ruth Smeeth; and worrying about the “privileging of racism against Jews, over and above — as more worthy of resources than other forms of racism.”
Elected to Wirral Council in August 2018, Cllr Bird has been a member of Jewish Voice for Labour, the antisemitism-denial group and sham Jewish representative organisation, and she has described Labour’s institutional antisemitism as based on mere “accusations, witch-huntery and allegations without evidence”.
Cllr Bird appears to have been expelled from Labour for her association with the proscribed antisemitism-denial group, Labour Against the Witchhunt.
Cllr Bird then joined the Green Party last year, after Campaign Against Antisemitism warned of the danger of controversial activists who have left the Labour Party joining the Greens instead.
Earlier this year, the Jewish Greens appointed Cllr Bird as a senior officer.
Our polling of British Jews found that the Greens were second only to Labour in how many respondents felt that the Party was too tolerant of antisemitism (43%).
Campaign Against Antisemitism has extensively documented alleged antisemitism among officers of the Green Party of England and Wales, including the Party’s former Equalities and Diversity Coordinator, on which the Green Party has failed to act.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019 showed that antisemitism on the far-left of British politics has surpassed that of the far-right.
Campaign Against Antisemitism advocates for zero tolerance of antisemitism in public life. To that end we monitor all political parties and strive to ensure that any cases of concern are properly addressed.
