The House Article | Why Hannah Spencer should come with me to Strangers’ for a drink

Hannah Spencer with Zack Polanski, March 2026 (Alamy)

3 min read13 min

If she wants to help her constituents in Gorton and Denton, she’ll need allies: nothing gets turned into law with a vote of one. 

By extending the invitation, I’m offering Hannah the chance to get to know some of the 645 non-Green parliamentary colleagues she just threw under the bus. After just two months in the job, she told the press that we’re dishonest, smell of alcohol and do nothing for our communities.

But fair play to Hannah. Her opinions have got the Greens plenty of news coverage ahead of the local elections. As she said in her recent interview with PoliticsJOE, “If I’m winding those people up and they’re worried – they’re linked to the establishment we think should have less power – so, if I’m doing that, I think I’m on the right track.”

The right track for Hannah appears to be demonising large groups of people to win votes. Isn’t that the ugliest section of the populist playbook? The blame-game clickbait used to distract voters from the extremist policies in the small print. For Reform UK, the scapegoat is immigrants. For the Greens, it’s the so-called ‘establishment’. 

But it is a tactic that plays fast and loose with MPs’ safety. Whipping up anti-MP sentiment is dangerous. In a recent parliamentary survey, 96 per cent of current MPs said they had personally experienced one or more incidents of threatening behaviour. I’m sure Hannah is familiar with this herself.

After my recent work on the Crime and Policing Bill, I had death threats. I know my other colleagues have had too, depending on what they’re working on. And in the last 10 years, two MPs – Jo Cox and David Amess – have been murdered in hate-fuelled attacks.

So, I’d be grateful for the chance to take Hannah for a drink at the bar. (I hope they serve the WKD Blue she likes, or she can have alcohol-free drink of course.) I’ll be taking her because I want to tackle her prejudices. Rather than ‘establishment’ stooges, she’ll meet everyday people from all walks of life who, like me, are passionate about serving their communities.

Speaking for MPs from my own party so heavily criticised by Hannah, what we are is sensible, grounded politicians with the whole nation’s interests at heart. (That’s why we won the 2024 election. People didn’t vote for large groups of ‘disruptor’ politicians like Hannah.)

And I believe people want less drama, not more – they just want to get on with their lives. So, while MPs from other parties chase headlines, Labour continues to do the right thing – such as working hard with our international allies to calm tensions and bring fuel prices down at home. 

The drink would be an olive branch, not a stunt. If Hannah wants to rail against power, she should first understand how change is made: through persuasion, building alliances and respecting the people voters choose – even when you disagree with them. If the Greens want to be taken seriously as lawmakers, not just hecklers, the first round is on me.

Tonia Antoniazzi is Labour MP for Gower and chair of the Beer APPG