Party is sued by spokesman it sacked over his trans opinions

A FORMER Green Party spokesman who was sacked because of his position on transgender people is bringing legal action against his former colleagues.

Shahrar Ali, 53, was removed as spokesman for policing and domestic safety on Feb 5 after complaints that his tweets about women’s sex-based rights were transphobic.

Party officials ruled that “his decision to champion a highly controversial position in the trans rights debate [was] not compatible” with his role.

Mr Ali is now suing the party, alleging discrimination against gendercritical beliefs, under the 2010 Equality Act, in what could be a landmark case.

As a bitter civil war engulfs Britain’s fifth largest political party, its equality tsars have denounced its “hostile environment” for debate and senior party members have quit in protest over its stance on transgender issues.

Dr Ali, a former deputy leader who has been a spokesman for nine years, has publicly backed the right of women to defend single-sex spaces such as prisons, refuges and sports centres.

He has stressed that “a woman is commonly defined as an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes … these facts are not in dispute”, which some say conflicts with the Green Party’s view that trans women are women.

A party member for 20 years, Dr Ali has also called for the imposition of more safeguards in relation to the prescribing of puberty blockers for children and has raised concerns about the influence of the lobby group Stonewall.

Dr Ali, a research manager at Queen Mary, University of London, told The Sunday Telegraph he had performed his role “dutifully” but had been subjected to “authoritarianism” and “cancel culture”. He added: “We need a compassionate politics, where it’s possible to agree to disagree; and to allow others who want to debate or negotiate their rights to be free to do so,” he said.

“There is nothing compassionate about the passive aggressive injunction to, ‘Just be kind!’; or else.”