A Green Party candidate for the upcoming election has come under fire for making racially charged remarks about Justice Secretary David Lammy and former Home Secretary Priti Patel, describing them as ‘coconuts,’ The Mail on Sunday reports.

Hau-Yu Tam, who serves as the deputy leader of the Greens in Lewisham, south-east London, has also supported a campaign advocating for the removal of Hamas from the UK’s list of designated terrorist organizations. Additionally, she has shared social media posts that label Zionism, the movement supporting the state of Israel, as akin to ‘the Nazism of our time.’

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has uncovered that Ms. Tam is among several Green Party candidates in the forthcoming local elections who have a history of making offensive statements or possessing problematic backgrounds, including criminal records.

The inquiry revealed one candidate in London who claimed to have participated in a protest at Stansted Airport, where activists prevented a plane from deporting 25 individuals, among them a convicted murderer and a child rapist. Another candidate was noted for throwing orange powder over a £300,000 garden exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Other candidates vying for council positions in the upcoming elections have defended acts of vandalism against the statue of Winston Churchill or have propagated conspiracy theories. This includes a candidate who speculated on social media that a drone attack on an RAF base might have been a ‘false flag’ operation.

These disclosures emerge as the Green Party is poised to secure a significant number of council seats in the elections set for May 7. In fact, a poll conducted last month suggested that the party, which leans far-left, may even surpass Labour in terms of popularity.

The MoS can reveal that Ms Tam, described as ‘brilliant’ by Green leader Zack Polanski when she defected from Labour last year, lambasted Mr Lammy after he reportedly told ministers he has a family member who is on benefits when they probably should not be.

Writing on X last year, Ms Tam said: ‘It’s reminiscent of Priti Patel admitting her family wouldn’t get in under her own immigration rules, but somehow even more callous. These coconuts.’ The post was later deleted.

Hau-Yu Tam (pictured left, with party leader Zack Polanski), deputy leader of the Greens in Lewisham, southeast London, called Justice Secretary David Lammy and former Home Secretary Priti Patel ‘coconuts’ in a vile racial slur

Despite repeated allegations of anti-Israeli bias and editorial failures at the BBC, Karishma Patel, who is standing in Brent, north London, quit her job as a journalist over what she described as the corporation’s ‘failure to hold Israel to account’

Coconut is a highly offensive racial slur, meaning that someone is black or brown on the outside and white on the inside.

Dame Priti Patel MP, now Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: ‘Being called a coconut by a Green candidate doesn’t surprise me. The Left preaches tolerance until a woman of colour refuses to agree with them and their intolerant views – the mask has slipped and the public can see the sheer nastiness of the Greens.’

Ms Tam also retweeted a post that said: ‘Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished.’ A few days later she shared a post saying Zionism was ‘undoubtedly, unquestionably the Nazism of our time.’

She also hailed barrister Franck Magennis, who worked on an unsuccessful application to remove Hamas from the Home Office’s list of proscribed organisations, writing that she was ‘extremely proud’ of Mr Magennis ‘for being among those blazing the way on this intervention’.

The Green Party told the MoS: ‘These comments do not reflect the views of the party.’

The Greens are set to field more than 2,000 candidates across England and – following a surge in the opinion polls – is expected to win at least four councils in London off Labour.

Our investigation, however, raises questions over the party’s vetting of its candidates.

Anna Turley MP, Labour Party chairman, said: ‘The Greens are fielding an astonishing array of crackpot candidates. Zack Polanski needs to say whether he endorses their views and is happy for them to represent his party. If he doesn’t, he needs to make that clear and kick them out.’

Would-be local politicians identified by the MoS audit include Jo Dowbor, who is fighting to win a seat in Islington, north London.

Ms Dowbor grew up in Argentina and appears to back Buenos Aires’ claim over the Falkland Islands, reposting a picture on social media of a football fan wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘The Malvinas [Argentina’s name for the Falklands] belong to Argentina.’

In an interview with an Argentine newspaper, she suggested that questions over the sovereignty of the islands are still up for debate, saying: ‘It’s not considered resolved.’

She added: ‘I would love to seek a diplomatic solution to resolve years of tension.’

Stephanie Golder (pictured centre), a candidate in Tower Hamlets, east London, was one of three Just Stop Oil activists who threw orange powder across a prize-winning display garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2023

Tory Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake MP said: ‘The Falkland Islands are British. That is not up for negotiation.’ 

On Saturday night a Green Party spokesman said: ‘These elections are about fairness, not the Falklands.’

Other candidates can be revealed as eco-fanatics involved in some of the most notorious protests of the past decade.

Ed Thacker, a psychotherapist and self-proclaimed ‘anarchist’, who is standing in Haringey, north London, received a suspended jail sentence in 2016 after he and 12 others cut through a fence at Heathrow Airport and chained themselves together on one of the runways. The protest caused 25 flights to be cancelled and resulted in ‘immense’ costs.

A year later, Mr Thacker and other militant protesters from End Deportations locked themselves together at Stansted and stopped a Home Office deportation flight. 

The protest meant 60 people were taken off the flight heading to Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, including 25 criminals who had been imprisoned in the UK.

Mr Thacker and the other activists were convicted under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act, but the convictions were later overturned.

Writing on the Green Party website, Mr Thacker, the son of a West End theatre director, boasted of his woke credentials: ‘I’ve spent years in feminist and queer collectives that invited each straight, cis-gender man like me to explore how cis-heteronormative patriarchy has affected our behaviour.’

Stephanie Golder, a candidate in Tower Hamlets, east London, was one of three Just Stop Oil activists who threw orange powder across a prize-winning display garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2023.

Later that year, she received a six-month suspended prison sentence after she was part of a group that caused £100,000 of damage at a service station on the M25.

She is not the only candidate who seemingly regards vandalism as a legitimate form of protest.

Jo Dowbor, who grew up in Argentina and is fighting to win a seat in Islington, north London, has said Britain should hand back the Falklands. She is pictured here with Jeremy Corbyn

Zoe Garbett, a London Assembly member and the Greens’ mayoral candidate in Hackney, provoked uproar last month when she appeared to justify an attack on the statue of Winston Churchill.

Ms Garbett dismissed the outcry over the vandalism as ‘over-reach and hysteria pushed by the Right.

‘Rather than worrying about a statue, what should worry us all are the policies [that] provoked such action – the UK’s complicity and continued support for Israel.’

Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives on the London Assembly, said: ‘I am truly shocked. I don’t know what’s happened to the Green Party.’

Meanwhile, other would-be Green politicians have pushed wild conspiracy theories.

TV producer Mark Adderley, a candidate in Croydon, south London, regularly rants about Israel on his YouTube channel alongside his wife, Nadia Sawalha, a presenter on ITV’s Loose Women.

After a kamikaze drone – believed to have been fired by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon – struck a British base in Cyprus in March, Mr Adderley released a video entitled ‘Could drone attack on RAF be Israeli false flag?’

‘The Western Zionist-supporting, Israeli-complicit media and governments are all going to say, “Well, it must have come from Hezbollah,” he added.

In another video he drew a highly offensive comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany.

He added: ‘Israel is the biggest threat to the sovereignty of every nation on this planet because they are the chosen people, deluded cult. It is just a cult.’

The Green Party said the videos have since been deleted and do not represent the views of the party.

Mr Adderley is one of many Green candidates who appear to spend more time making offensive comments online about Israel than talking about local issues.

Take, for instance, Chandni Chopra, a candidate for Heaton ward in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who has declared on social media that she ‘proudly’ chanted ‘death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]’ during a recent protest.

She has also posted a video of her and a mob of activists demonstrating at the office of Labour MP Chi Onwurah after she abstained on an SNP parliamentary motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Ms Chopra filmed herself demanding that the MP ‘face her constituents’, adding: ‘We are waiting for you, Chi Onwurah.’

Meanwhile, despite repeated allegations of anti-Israeli bias and editorial failures at the BBC, Karishma Patel, who is standing in Brent, north London, quit her job as a journalist over what she described as the corporation’s ‘failure to hold Israel to account’.

Ms Patel, a finalist at last year’s Miss Universe Great Britain beauty pageant, said the BBC ‘failed Palestinian children’ when a controversial documentary was removed from BBC iPlayer after it was revealed that its child narrator was the son of a minister in Gaza’s Hamas-run government.

The Green Party said on Saturday night it was the only party ‘standing up to establishment politicians and their super-rich friends.’

Additional reporting: Christian Calgie