The Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer has used her maiden speech in Parliament to call on the UK government to stop arms sales to Israel.
Denyer said that Britain’s international reputation “has been compromised by our government’s refusal to clearly condemn the Israeli government’s disproportionate response to the horrific terrorist attacks of 7 October.”
The new MP for Bristol Central said that “the UK’s continuing arms sales for use against Palestinians” which she claimed was “in persistent breach of international law … must stop, and I am clear too that demanding it should not be controversial.”
She, along with Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay and MP Ellie Chowns, also backed an amendment to the King’s Speech, submitted by left-wing Labour MP Zarah Sultana, that calls on the government to ban arms sales to Israel and “support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages, to immediately recognise the state of Palestine, to restore funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, to drop the challenge to the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction in Gaza.”
Denyer was one of four new Green MPs elected at the general election on July 4.
The Green Party co-leader inflicted one of few defeats on Labour, securing a high-profile victory against the party’s shadow cabinet minister Thangam Debbonaire.
The new Green MP paid tribute to Debbonaire, who she said supported Bristol’s “amazing creative industries as shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport”. She also praised “her groundbreaking move to hold what is believed to have been the first-ever constituency surgery for people on the autistic spectrum.”
During the campaign, Denyer was criticised by former Labour MP Louise Ellman for “stirring division” after the JC revealed that she was using Palestinian flags and images of destruction in Gaza on official campaign material in Bristol Central.
In an interview with the JC in June, Green Party deputy leader Zac Polanksi, who is Jewish, claimed that the number of Jews who don’t support Israel is undercounted in the UK community and said the Board of Deputies should be renamed the “Board of Deputies for the Israeli government”.
