Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali has rejected Suella Braverman’s claim that people of Asian heritage cannot describe themselves as English, declaring that he is “as English as a Yorkshire cup of tea”.
Mr Ali, a Leeds councillor of Bangladeshi descent, addressed party activists at the Greens’ conference in Brighton after the Reform UK MP said she considered herself “British of Asian ethnicity” rather than English.
“A message to Suella, I’m brown, I’m Muslim. But I’m as English as a Yorkshire cup of tea!” he told the gathering. Activists booed when Mrs Braverman was mentioned.
The former home secretary made her comments during an appearance on BBC Question Time, where she linked her view of her nationality to her family’s heritage.
Her position has also been criticised by former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who warned that defining nationality in such terms risked creating “a very slippery slope” by turning it “into a DNA test”.
Mr Ali used his speech to call on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to declare a “national emergency” over what he described as “unprecedented levels of racist violence and intimidation”.
“This is not just a policing problem. It’s a test of whether a diverse democracy can protect the equal right of everybody to belong,” he said.
The Greens’ conference is taking place days before party leader Zack Polanski faces the polls in his bid to become an MP at next Thursday’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
The gathering is also being overshadowed by a motion due to be debated on Sunday which states that “Zionism is racism”. It defines Zionism as support for “an ethnonationalist Jewish State” and says it should be treated by the party “as any other form of racism”.
Former Green leaders Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay have criticised the motion as “divisive” and “wrong”. Mr Polanski has also been warned that it could be seen as suggesting that Jewish people are not welcome in the party.
Mr Ali said the Greens’ rapid membership growth should be regarded as a strength, but only if members learned to manage disagreements.
“Difference is not betrayal. Disagreement is not disloyalty,” he said. “Losing a vote does not make the person who beat you your enemy. And winning does not give you permission to humiliate the people who disagreed with you.”
He added that the party should never tolerate “racism, misogyny, homophobia or intimidation inside our own movement”, arguing that the Greens had an opportunity to become “one of the most inclusive political movements in modern Britain”.
