Green party smears debunked

The Metro newspaper is owned by DMG Media, which is the same company that owns the Daily Mail. Unlike with the Daily Mail, DMG seems to have no confidence in the Metro’s ability to sustain an audience, which is why they give it out for free on public transport (making money via adverts).

Anyway, would you be surprised to learn that Metro put out a highly dubious story about the Green Party on 21 February?

Green party smears: are these journalists on drugs?

The reporter Brooke Davies describes herself as follows on the Metro site:

News reporter specialising in London-based stories, with a particular emphasis on crime, policing, prisons and justice.

According to her Twitter bio, Davies is also a stalwart of the sewer that is Mail Online.

In the opening section to the Metro article, reporter Davies writes:

The Green Party has called for primary school children to be taught how to safely consume drugs.

In their newly revealed policy proposals, the party, led by Zack Polanski, wants to legalise crack cocaine, heroin and date-rape drug GHB for recreational use.

They also want to create a ‘direct partnership’ between South American cartels to introduce a sustainable supply in the UK.

The policy also adds children ‘starting in primary school’ should be taught how to take drugs in Personal, Social and Health Education lessons, the Daily Mail reports.

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The way the second paragraph is introduced suggests that teaching kids how to smoke rock is part of the “newly revealed policy proposals”. If that’s the case, they must have written this new policy using some sort of invisible ink.

Oh, and there’s something else too. The third line suggests the Green Party would seek to work with South American drug cartels. This obviously couldn’t happen, because these cartels are considered criminal enterprises in their home countries – i.e. any attempt to work with them would incite an international incident.

As you can see above, political commentator Don McGowan took issue with all this, writing:

I’m trying to locate a source for your claims about the Green Party advocating for primary school children to be taught to use drugs.

Ditto, the comment about linking up with cartels.

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The best I can find is some unreferenced gossip from the Telegraph and an unnamed ‘Labour source’.

Please, could you let me know where this information came from? Genuine request.

Thank you.

He’s since followed up with this:

I asked for a source from Brookes Davies, but none was forthcoming, so I found it myself.

The quotes that she used in her piece about the [Green Party] drugs policy were from a local website belonging to the South Tyneside Greens in 2019.

Whether you are a Green voter or not, this type of underhand, dirty tricks journalism should have no place in politics.

Taking clearly out of date lines from a regional party website and passing them off as current is really manipulative.

Sitting alongside the Metro’s sister paper, the Daily Mail, their smear campaign yesterday announced that Hannah Spencer had a ‘£1.2 million property empire’.

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This distraction and unproven headline is trying to push focus to Matt Goodwin.

Goodwin has been under huge pressure recently, with accusations of Russian money links and misogynistic and borderline fanatical ideas about women and their abilities to have children.

I digress, but it’s really important to know that these two mainstream media outlets are misleading the public.

I’m currently finishing an article about political influence in the media, and it couldn’t be more timely — the week of one of the most highly publicised by-elections in history.

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Keep an eye out for that, but this is Brookes Davies’ source.

Unreliable? Yes.
Downright devious? Also, yes.

Drug wars

As we reported yesterday, it’s not just the media smearing the Greens on the issue of drugs; it’s also Reform and Labour:

Labour is asking you to imagine what it must be like to live in a country where drugs are plentiful and easy to get hold of. The problem is we already live in a country where drugs are plentiful and easy to get hold of.

Also:

There’s an obvious parallel to all this, and it’s the Prohibition Era in the United States. During that time, they made it illegal for citizens to drink alcohol. Did that stop people drinking?

No, of course not.

But it did give organised crime access to fast, easy cash, and this is precisely what’s happened here with drugs.

And we added:

To be clear, the Greens aren’t saying you should be able to buy smack from a vending machine. They’re proposing a system in which drugs are treated seriously, but are available for people to partake of in a controlled fashion. Under Keir Starmer, you can buy crack from a guy called ‘Spez’ and OD under a motorway bridge.

Which sounds more grown up to you?

Unfortunately, the British establishment is allergic to acknowledging the decades-long failures they oversaw. And because they know their arguments don’t hold up, they smear, and smear, and smear.

Featured image via Barold