The Rundown Podcast: Greens At A Crossroads

4 min read20 June

This week the podcast takes a look at perhaps the forgotten winners of last year’s general election, as despite unprecedented success in winning 1.8m votes and quadrupling their number of MPs to four, the Green Party finds itself at something of a crossroads.

With a leadership contest this summer the spotlight is on how does it build on that success, what can it do to remain part of the national conversation and champion its progressive causes, as meanwhile all of the oxygen of public discourse appears to be taken up with how the two main parties hold off the threat from Nigel Farage and Reform.

Joining host Alain Tolhurst on The Rundown to discuss where the party goes, and how it can build on continued success at the local level and exploit the disillusionment some voters have about Labour, is one of the candidates to lead the Greens in this new era, their current deputy leader and London Assembly member, Zack Polanski.

He explained why he decided to put his hat in the ring after the current leaders, the MPs Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, reached the end of their two-year term at the top of the party this summer.

“We're at this really interesting moment in British politics where we've had 14 years of Conservative austerity and underinvestment, and lots of people voted for the Labour Party wanting change”, Polanski said.

“But actually, whether it's for winter fuel payments or the two-child benefit cap, the genocide in Gaza, people have seen a Labour Party that doesn't seem to have stuck with where people traditionally thought Labour values are at.

“I feel like there's a real space in British politics where people are crying out for the Green Party to seize this moment; we’ve got a nature and climate crisis, deep inequality in our society, and just last summer, we had racist riots on our streets.”

He said "the party really requires someone at the top of the party who can demonstrate bold leadership”, criticising Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, who are standing on a joint ticket against him, of favouring “slow, incremental change”.

Part of the reason the party finds itself at an inflection point is that despite success at the general election and continued victories at the local level, there is consternation that it has failed to cut through politically in the way that another party with just a handful of MPs, Reform UK, has managed to do.

Polanski agreed the Greens needed to be better at “telling a powerful story” about their policies in the way Farage had managed to, with his right-wing party now polling at above 25 per cent.

“I reject most of Farage’s politics, but it's undoubtedly true that he has cut through, he cut through even before he was an MP with the power of storytelling,” he said.

“It’s easier if you're on the right because I would argue you could just tell lies or misinformation, you just tell an emotive story. But on the left, we want to be based on facts and information.”

There have also been suggestions of a split in the party between its more city-based politicians and activists, and its rural supporters, with both Chowns and Ramsay representing former Conservative seats in the countryside, while Polanski sits on the London Assembly.

But Polanski rejected this idea, saying “people are people”, and that voters he speaks to outside of urban areas still care about issues like rent control, because “their children and grandchildren also live in cities where they're worried about unscrupulous landlords”.

He said he could “see why it's sometimes a helpful narrative that the media very often frame this idea that the party is split between rural MPs and then my kind of social justice policy”, but added that “workers’ rights are also fundamental in rural constituencies too”.

“It's it's about speaking to people and not speaking to particular constituencies,” Polanski said.

He also spoke about why the narrative around the Green Party being 'NIMBYs', and not favouring development that could improve the country's housing and energy crises, was wrong, and defended his party's stance on trans inclusion, after attacks from gender critical members.

The full interview, which also features Sophie Stowers, research manager at the think tank More in Common, and Sophie Church, reporter at our sister title The House magazine, will be available here on Friday morning.

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot