When I stood for leader of the Greens in 2025, our party was at a crossroads. The transformative leadership of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay had taken us to an electoral success we’d never seen before. I knew we had even greater potential – and that the country was crying out for the bold politics we could offer.

We have seen unprecedented wins this year – from our first ever parliamentary byelection win to our landslide council and mayoral victories in former Labour strongholds.

Those victories have moved Labour. Our electoral successes helped topple Keir Starmer, seeing him replaced by a prime minister unarguably to his left. They forced a change in tone in the government’s relations with Israel. The government has even rowed back on some of its cruel anti-migrant policies.

Our work isn’t done. But the next phase for our party takes place in a landscape that is clearly more challenging for us. Andy Burnham is enjoying a honeymoon phase, and hasn’t yet had to make the “difficult decisions” that will reveal exactly who will lose out under his government – unpopular choices he will probably start making at his fast-approaching first budget.
[…]
The result also came at a difficult moment for our party. A motion voted through at our conference, “Zionism is racism”, has stirred up strong feelings among many members and the wider public too. And I know there have been questions about my approach to the motion.

I’m a Jewish man who grew up in a Zionist household. The story I was told about Israel was one of destiny and safety: a land without a people for a people without a land. But since then I have learned about the people who did live on that land – and what has happened to them. The Palestinians driven from their homes; slaughtered en masse; and those who remain, living under an apartheid system that denies them fundamental rights, including that of self-determination.

It has been difficult knowing how to approach this imperfect motion, because its substance chimes with my understanding of Zionism as the ideology that underpins the displacement and genocide of Palestinians. This is something I share with many other Jewish people, including Stephen Kapos, the holocaust survivor who was one of those supporting the motion.

At the same time, Zionism is not easily defined, and I know for many Jewish people it is bound up with identity, safety and belonging. In my view it’s not the job of a political party to tell people what to believe – and a narrow focus on definitions is neither desirable nor strategic.

There are also elements of the motion that I don’t agree with – such as dictating the future shape of a state in Israel and Palestine. While many people understandably see the idea of a two-state solution as standing in the way of concrete action to end the unbearable status quo, I believe it is not up to the British government – let alone the Green party – to decide the future for Israelis and Palestinians.

Before the vote, I made it clear that there were amendments I would like to see made, and I am disappointed that those did not pass.

One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effective altruists and people who believe LLMs are sentient to beg GitHub to delete the project on the grounds that the AI is suffering and that this glorified text adventure game is somehow cruel. The saga is an outgrowth of several recent viral papers and blog posts that have sparked a wildly tiresome conversation about AI consciousness and the idea of “model welfare,” which is essentially worrying about the “mental health” of AI bots and agents.

https://beep.acab.taxi/

Context: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117324790823856750

Bluesky

Nighthawks, the long-in-development vampire RPG due to be released later this month, is the latest game to run afoul of Steam's increasingly stringent rules regarding adult content. According to publisher Wadjet Eye Games, the game has been labelled 'Adults Only'—causing it to be removed from Steam search and outright delisted in certain countries like Germany—despite claims from both developer and publisher that the RPG's depictions of sex and nudity are very mild.

"We are aware that Steam has classified Nighthawks as an adult game and has excluded it from searches," Wadjet Eye boss Dave Gilbert wrote on Bluesky. "We are working on it. Valve is under the impression that this game is way sexier than it actually is." Gilbert further commented that "Valve is basically treating Nighthawks like a porn game!" in responding to a reply to his initial post.

A game being labelled Adults Only can affect its visibility in several ways. Adults Only games will not appear in Steam searches by default, requiring users to log in, verify their age (which requires the use of a credit card in some countries) and adjust their preferred content settings before they become visible. In addition, the label can cause games to be delisted outright in certain countries.

ZACK Polanski, the leader of the Green Party [of England and Wales], has announced his intention to stand as a candidate in Holborn and St Pancras – following Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation.

He had pledged to stand in a by-election if one came up in London and exclusively told the New Journal he was ready to fight this one.

“I have lived and worked in this community over many years, I know it well and I love it,” he said.

“It represents so many of the things that make London so special. I am so excited by the prospect of representing this place in Parliament.”

“Holborn and St Pancras has everything that’s the best of our country and so much potential,” said Mr Polanski.

“But for too long now it’s been held back by governments who have failed to make the changes to improve people’s lives.

“We know that the Greens can win here, and by electing me, voters will have someone who will always fight their corner – never scared of big donors or the party whip. Too often Labour has stood up for corporations and big money. I will stand up for people struggling to pay their bills.”

As he struggles with questions about the millions he has received from the billionaire Christopher Harborne, Nigel Farage has made no secret of his enthusiastic support for the industry that made part of his benefactor’s fortune – cryptocurrency. The Reform UK leader even urged the governor of the Bank of England to drop a crypto policy that may be costly for Harborne.

But another element of Harborne’s business interests could prove still more consequential if it shapes Farage’s positions. There appears to be no precedent for a major UK donor who is so entwined with the military.

The Guardian’s ongoing investigation into the origins of Harborne’s riches and whether his donations inform Farage’s agenda has established the Thailand-based tycoon’s global web of commercial interests in the arms industry and military contracts. Among Harborne’s business collaborators are a striking number of former army officers, air force pilots, military officials and even, it seems, a former MI6 officer.

Jewish Greens are deeply disappointed and angry about The Canary’s decision to publish an attack on our group, written by the Iranian state television co-host David Miller.

He states that Jewish Green Officers coordinated a campaign to filibuster the Zionism is Racism motion. This is simply not true and he provides no evidence for it.

He follows this unfounded allegation with a series of insinuations about our families, our communities and our synagogues. We need to be very clear. Attending a synagogue, or engaging in community activities such as youth work does not mean you hold any particular views on Israel and Palestine or the genocide in Gaza. Implying this is the case is antisemitic.

Many of our group identify as anti-Zionists, and there is no consensus on the motion, as indicated by our updated interim statement, which Miller has ignored. Miller appears to regard it as impossible for someone Jewish to not be a Zionist, regardless of what they say themselves. This is also antisemitic.

He has identified our families, potentially leading to them being targets of abuse or harassment for political stances they have no part in. He has identified the synagogue some of us are members of, also potentially opening it up to the risk of violence, in a year where we have seen several attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals. This is an intolerable invasion of privacy, dangerous, and cannot be justified as being in the public interest.

We remain committed to the values of the Green Party, an end to antisemitism and all forms of racism, and freedom for Palestine and Palestinians.