Focus on stop selling arms to Israel

Speech to Jewish Voice for Labour, June 2025

Jo Bird: “Hi, guys. It's really good to be in this meeting.

I'm so thankful and grateful for Jewish Voice for Labour for defending me twice when I was suspended by the Labour Party for no good reason. And then finally, you know, the Labour Party changed the rules and expelled hundreds of people like me retrospectively.

I was Independent for four months and I tried to recruit other people to stand as Independent Councillors and failed. It's really difficult to stand as an Independent. It takes a lot of a machine to get elected and we do live unfortunately under the first past the post system.

So we have to target our resources, campaign where we can win. Otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and we're just pissing in the wind basically, as the election results show, generally. There are some special exceptions and I will come to them.

So I stood as Green candidate for Birkenhead MP last year's General Election. We came second. We beat Reform in every single part of our constituency. That's how we beat Reform – we're active, we campaign, we get on the front foot, we put out the Green messages of hope. We can have a fairer, greener community and society.

The Jewish Labour Movement continued their attacks against me. They called for me and other former Labour Councillors who had joined the Green Party to be removed as candidates. And if that had happened in the Labour Party, I would have been suspended like that. You know that, we know that. But the Green Party defended me. I carried on as a candidate.

Not only that, Zack came up to my ward, stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder and defended me and campaigned with me. That's the kind of backing we get as socialists within the Green Party. You can't beat it. And there's certainly nothing else that compares to it.

By the way, we came second in Birkenhead with 20% of the vote. And we're intending to win next time because we need a whole load of good Green MPs to counter the huge number of Reform MPs that we're likely to have - unless we unite, unless we stop pissing about, excuse my language.

Okay there are, I do think there are some special circumstances. There's five Independent MPs, there's four green MPs. Where there are those five independent MPs, I do think you may have special circumstances for them to get re-elected, to carry on campaigning and so on. But otherwise it [part of this discussion] looks to me like left-wing, self-indulgent privilege. It's a philosophical moot point, ‘should we compete against each other?’

There's loads of constituencies that are crying out for strong, decent, socialist and eco-minded, environmentally friendly candidates. We can support those people where they want to stand, in all kinds of constituencies in their election campaign. We are all part of the same movement, the same social movement. But when it comes to elections, we have to deal with first the post and target and focus our resources.

It's not only about us and what we personally think and what we personally experienced in one [local] Green Party or another. The Green Party is very patchy across the country. I'm not gonna lie. It's not strong everywhere. There's other constituencies where I am where Reform beat Greens and that's not okay and we have to change that.

It's not only about us and our local experience or personal experience, it's about our future. It's about our children, our grandchildren and it's also about Palestinians. Its about this global turning point where we're at, where, you know, human rights are getting destroyed before our eyes. The whole infrastructure that was set up after the Holocaust so it couldn't happen again. It's going. And we all know this. We've all been on the protests. I cry about it because it's just horrendous what's happening there.

And Zack, in interview after interview, has nailed the antisemitism smear. He's nailed conflating Israel with pro-Palestinian protest, partly because he's Jewish but also because he speaks so well. He's done it over and over again and we're not gonna get a better opportunity than this.

Zack is a great Jewish leader of a major political party. That we can make much more major by uniting. But okay you don't have to join if you really don't want to but frigging hell, you've got to have a really good reason not to get with the pro... I don't mean that. I mean, now is the time. I'm really passionate about this.

We've all been through, we've lived this journey through the disaster of Labour - that's dead. Labour is the Party of genocide. They're complicit in genocide. Even the MPs we like or have liked, John McDonnell, Ian Byrne [and more], they're complicit in Labour's support of genocide, arms deals with Israel and so on. So we have to change that to move on. Thank you.”

Zack Polanski said, “Jo spoke so powerfully just then. I still feel a little bit choked up from seeing Jo choked up too.

The way you speak Jo, just I think demonstrates why I'm so proud that you're in the party and what you do for the party and what an incredible asset you've been to the party. Both the party but [also] to your residents and constituents - and I have no doubt will play, or continue to play a national role in politics too.

I'm not dodging the question, but what I would say is I just did an interview with Middle East Eye. If you type Middle East Eye, Zack Polanski we'll then speak for half an hour specifically about this issue and that's probably better than I would answer now.

End the genocide I think is very clearly the call we should keep repeating. Now, I think there's other calls too, which is about ending the settlements, ending the occupation, and I think those things are important. What I tend to say to people, when they ask me, is that we know they are more divisive within the public, which doesn't mean we shouldn't be talking about them. We should be talking about them.

But we know the immediate thing that needs to happen is to end the genocide, and end the arm sales to Israel. And I think that would make the biggest difference right now to both the conversation, but also the material actions for so many people living in Palestine and innocent people who are dying.

So I think sometimes if we try and say or do too many things at once, we lose people. I think the rallying call right now should just be repeatedly and it should not be contentious. For the majority of people that innocent people are dying, our government is not just complicit, they're active participants in it.

The number one thing we should stop doing is selling arms to Israel and using every diplomatic leverage that we have to stop this happening, including not offering Trump a state visit at the same time that he's talking about turning Gaza. into a luxury condo. It's beyond depraved. And I think just for all of us to have the moral clarity and consistency and speaking up on this issue.

And then, yes, of course when we've got there and when we're moving to there, then there's a much wider conversation to have about the occupation. But I think if we try and jump to there too quick, again, people just shout antisemitism at us and I think it's much, much clearer right now to focus on the genocide."

June 2025