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Hundreds turned out to the Green Party rally in St. George on Monday evening, with tickets reportedly selling out in under four hours of its announcement last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer kicked off proceedings. Denyer, who was party co-lead from 2021, handed a green baton to successor, Zack Polanski as he bounded onto the stage \u2013 a symbolic transfer of power.<\/p>\n In the audience sat the local Green party\u2019s newest signing, former Labour councillor Alsayed Al-Magrabi, who defected to the Greens last Thursday.\u00a0Al-Magrabi\u2019s defection brings the party\u2019s councillors to 35 in Bristol, one shy of a majority.<\/p>\n Reporting on the stories that matter to you. Only with your support.<\/p>\n Reacting to the move, Cllr Emma Edwards, leader of the Green group said: \u201cIt is brave to leave a party that no longer aligns with you and to stand up for what you believe in. Al will be a huge asset to our group.\u201d<\/p>\n Al-Magrabi\u2019s defection is part of a broader shake up in UK politics, and the decline of the traditional two party rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Greens are surging. Bolstered by Polanski\u2019s eco-socialist platform, membership has exploded to over 150,000<\/a> in the space of a few months, overtaking the Conservatives and making the party the third-largest in the UK. Amongst 18-14 year olds, the Greens are topping the polls<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the political spectrum: Reform, riding on a right-wing anti-immigration agenda, are currently polling at just below 30%<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before heading to the rally on Monday, Al-Magrabi joined us at the Cable office for his first in-depth interview since defecting, opening up about how his upbringing shaped his politics, why he went Green \u2013 and what that means for local politics in Bristol.<\/p>\n \u2018They left us in the dirt\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Al-Magrabi grew up in a low-income household in Leytonstone, east London, with a Palestinian father and a white English mother. From an early age, he was acutely aware of the social problems around him.<\/p>\n \u201cGrowing up, I was always quite poor, and as a disabled kid, I faced lots of challenges,\u201d says Al-Magrabi,\u00a0who has a speech impediment. <\/p>\n \u201cI always wondered \u2014 why aren\u2019t our politicians helping people who need it? They have the power to change things. Instead, they just left us in the dirt.<\/p>\n \u201cLeytonstone has a lot of poverty, violence, knife crime, gangs. I thought \u2014 someone has to step in, because the main reason young people turn to gangs and knife crime is poverty and lack of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n He moved to Bristol in 2017 to study politics and international studies at UWE, joining the Labour Party a year later. He threw himself into campaigning, volunteering tirelessly. \u201cI gave it a hundred percent. I gave up so much time because they were the party that could bring down the Conservatives.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2024, he was elected Labour councillor for Frome Vale, a northeastern Bristol ward covering Fishponds, Staple Hill, and UWE\u2019s Glenside campus. The area mixes leafy streets with more deprived neighbourhoods, but many constituent concerns were the same as those he\u2019d seen in London.<\/p>\n \u201cThe problems range from potholes to arson, drug dealing, shoplifting, even issues in the parks,\u201d he says, speaking proudly of his work to improve trust between local communities and the police and his efforts to clean up local green spaces.<\/p>\n Palestine was a breaking point\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Just months into his new role as a councillor, Al-Magrabi found it increasingly difficult to reconcile his commitment to social justice with a Labour Party moving ever further to the right in an attempt to outflank Reform.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d point to their anti-immigration stance, their refusal to introduce a wealth tax,\u201d he says, citing the factors that deepened his disillusionment.<\/p>\n But it was Labour\u2019s stance on Palestine that finally pushed him to leave the party that had been his political home for six years. Following two years of near-daily bombings in Gaza and a surge in settler attacks and home demolitions across the West Bank, Al-Magrabi could no longer work for a party that refused to criticise Israel in any meaningful way.<\/p>\n His family is from Jerusalem, and he frequently fears for their safety. \u201cThere are times I don\u2019t hear from them for five or six days. I think\u2014have they been shot? Arrested? Blown up? It\u2019s extremely hard. It hurts,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Though UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy suspended<\/a> 30 arms export licences to Israel in September, this represents less than 10% of the UK\u2019s total arms exports.<\/p>\n Al-Magrabi believes Labour\u2019s continued support for Israel\u2014including sharing intelligence from UK spy planes flying over Gaza\u2014amounts to complicity in Israel\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n
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Alsayed Al-Magrabi (second from left) with members of the Young Greens. Credit: Bristol Green Party. <\/p>\n