The Other Insurgent Party: Should The Greens Turn Left With Eco-Populism?

Green Party deputy leader, Zack Polanski, speaks at a rally against the Rosebank oilfield, London, Sep 2023 (Credit: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire)

Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party has seen Jeremy Corbyn kicked out, MPs lose the whip over their opposition to the two-child benefit cap, cuts made to welfare and a ban on puberty blockers for under-18s. He has now attracted further ire with talk of the UK becoming an “island of strangers” without stronger immigration controls.

Intent on defining himself in opposition to Corbynism, and now motivated to fight the threat of Reform UK, to many in Labour, Starmer’s approach is an uncomfortable necessity. But what if the disaffected on his left flank became a real threat – one comparable to that of Nigel Farage?

The Greens returned an impressive four MPs at last year’s general election. But Reform’s popularity has surged since July, whereas the party headed by Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay has failed to present an equivalent danger to the mainstream parties. Many Green members were disappointed by their party’s showing at the May elections, particularly the failure to win the West of England mayoralty.

The Green Party is now headed for a major reset. Denyer has taken herself out of the running of the upcoming leadership contest, for which nominations open on 2 June and voting will take place throughout August before a September result.

So far, two MPs Ramsay and Ellie Chowns are running as co-leaders, versus deputy leader and London Assembly member Zack Polanski, a former hypnotherapist who is best-known outside the party for once having offered to help a Sun reporter increase her bra size through hypnosis. Polanski hopes to win alone, which means he would have two deputies.

Critics say Polanski’s leadership would be an unwise descent into student politics; supporters argue his plan is ambitious and the only way to grow the party. While Ramsay and Chowns both represent rural seats and are seen to embody the more environmentally focused, socially conservative tradition in the Greens, Polanski has positioned himself as a disruptor going after urban voters who feel abandoned by a Labour Party distracted by Reform. Under Denyer and Ramsay, there was a balanced appeal to both groups – now Green members are being presented with a stark choice.

This isn’t ex-Corbynites trying a new thing. It’s about the future of the Green Party

Polanski was previously critical of Jeremy Corbyn for his handling of antisemitism within Labour, writing in 2018 that as a “pro-European Jew” this explained why he could not vote for the Islington MP’s party at the time. But in a recent interview with Novara Media he rowed back on these comments, calling them “unhelpful”. In his current efforts to appeal to former Corbynites, Polanski has also called for the UK to leave Nato.

Greens Organise, a group that launched at Green Party conference last year, is not officially linked to Polanski’s campaign but the two share activists and an ethos. “It’s an anti-capitalist, left-wing organisation that is aiming to articulate a bold, slightly confrontational, angrier, out-there, much more hard-hitting version of what the Green Party politics are,” says founding member and core organiser Steve Jackson.

Comparisons have been made to Momentum, the group that propelled Corbyn to the Labour leadership, then organised the left internally, pushing for socialist policies and expanding the party’s activist base. Greens Organise is similarly ambitious about growing the Greens membership and promoting a socialist, populist policy platform, communicated in terms of drawing ‘us vs them’ contrasts between supporters and elites.

Jackson rejects charges that the organisation is encouraging entryism. “I just don’t think it’s true,” he tells The House. “It’s not like anyone who likes Jeremy Corbyn is joining the Green Party and saying, ‘Oh my God, we need to completely change all of these policies’. Because it’s largely the same platform.” He emphasises: “This isn’t ex-Corbynites trying a new thing. It’s about the future of the Green Party.”

These Green activists do aim to attract the Labour left, however – an initiative that has already been successful in parts.

“We’ve grown in power, MPs and councillors over the last few years under the current leadership, and Zack’s played a huge role in that,” says Green Party London Assembly member Zoë Garbett. “He’s the person that’s really pushed for us to be bold – like our wealth tax position, and speaking so passionately in opposition to the genocide in Gaza.”

Sonia Winifred, a Lambeth Labour cabinet member for 10 years, last year voted for a Green Party motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and subsequently defected to the Greens. “Labour is no longer the party I recognise,” Winifred says now. “I just didn’t feel able to knock on doors and ask residents to vote Labour.”

She claims Labour has “taken the Black vote for granted for far too long”, saying: “It’s my intention to encourage certainly members of the Black community to think about the Green Party.”

While Green manifesto pledges such as abolishing the two-child benefit cap and pledging 150,000 new social homes a year appealed to her, she says there is “still a lot to be done” to make the Greens a viable option for Black voters.

They’ve got to understand where their new base is, which is basically disaffected, left-wing, former Corbyn supporters

Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former spokesperson for Corbyn, has also defected to the Greens. He helped set up Greens Organise, and hopes an “eco-populist platform” of the kind Polanski favours could help the party keep the votes of traditional Tory voters while pulling in Labour ones too.

“There’s been a definite recognition that the Green Party has not cut through sufficiently when compared to Reform. Part of that is the style of communication, but also it’s the platform and the policy, and not having the policy that can create those antagonisms the party needs to create,” he says.

“They’ve got to understand where their new base is, which is basically disaffected, left-wing, former Corbyn supporters, and move the party in that direction, if it wants to go to the next level.”

He adds: “When Nigel Farage is talking about getting rid of the two-child benefit cap, they know that that’s where Labour is going to be losing a lot of votes, and the Greens can pick those votes up.”

There is a sense among the left figures who have shifted to the Greens that they now have an opportunity to achieve what they couldn’t within Labour, where conference votes on policy are non-binding.

Zarb-Cousin agrees: “The Greens are a genuinely democratic party, so you can get the rules and policy changed with organising. Particularly in the context where Zack wins the leadership, all of these things can change pretty quickly… If we had Momentum in a Labour Party that was genuinely democratic, it would have looked very, very different.”

There is talk in Westminster of Socialist Campaign Group members – particularly those currently suspended as Labour MPs – defecting. The House is told Richard Burgon was in talks with the Greens about joining while suspended from Labour; a source close to the MP does not deny it but simply says this is “barking up the wrong tree”. Zarah Sultana and Apsana Begum are seen as the most likely candidates for defection, particularly if Polanski wins.

“I think there will come a point where it’s demonstrably in the interest of a number of MPs to defect. I think they should,” says Jackson of Greens Organise.

“If the Green Party is in the right place, then I’d hope that they would join the Green Party. I don’t think Zarah is getting the whip back, so she could come over,” says Zarb-Cousin.

“If you do set that first domino in motion, where someone who loses the whip then just defects to the Greens and they look like they might keep their seat, they’ll start to be less heavy handed with everyone else,” he adds of the Labour leadership.

But some allies of the MPs believe they are more likely to join a new outfit organised by left-wing independents who stood against Labour in the last election. “This whole cause is coming together so that by next year’s local elections, long before that, we’re going to have something in place that is very clear,” Corbyn recently told a ‘conference of resistance’ held by the new People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE).

“There is something brewing,” confirms a well-placed source who recently quit Labour. A new movement is more appealing than joining the Greens in many ways because, as they put it: “I don’t want to jump out of one frying pan into another. The Greens are also a broad church and will have the same issues as Labour had. You want to see whether they’re truly transformative or just opportunist in trying to pick up Labour members.”

Thelma Walker, a former Labour MP who left the party over Corbyn’s expulsion, says she is “impressed” by Polanski but finds not being a member of any party “liberating”. “For me, the best outcome would be a hung parliament with Greens and independents coming together,” she says. She would like to see an electoral pact agreed between the Greens and independents.

Garbett also takes the opportunity to mention the Greens’ “important relationship with the independents”, saying: “I really hope that people who are currently sitting as independent councillors, or maybe feeling quite politically homeless, will see this leadership election as an exciting moment and an olive branch.”

With former Corbynites being welcomed into the fold, more traditional ‘Deep Green’ party members are feeling sidelined by the influx of younger, more socially liberal activists motivated by identity politics.

The party’s internal rowing over gender lays bare this dynamic. Since 2021, 14 members of the Green Party Women committee, founded to “defend and extend the rights of women and girls”, have been suspended or expelled from the party. At least 17 signatories of the gender-critical Green Women’s Declaration have faced the same.

While Denyer has been absolute in her support for the pro-trans side of the debate, many members believe Ramsay has been ambivalent, for which he has been criticised online. Polanski is clear: anyone who engages in ‘misgendering’ is “transphobic” and “not welcome” in the Green Party. Greens Organise activists believe Labour’s positioning on the issue has helped encourage defections.

“It’s definitely a push factor from the Labour Party and a pull factor towards the Green Party,” says Jackson. “Whenever we, as Greens Organise, say our position – which is completely affirming and celebrating the existence of trans people and their rights – whenever we articulate that, we get lots of praise for it. Whenever people in the Green Party are equivocal about trans rights, they – rightly, in my opinion – are criticised for that.”

Those who have been expelled or suspended for their views on gender feel they have been robbed of their chance to stand. “There are a number of women that probably would have liked to have run if they hadn’t been removed from the party,” says one expelled member.

Shahrar Ali, who won a court case against the party last year on the basis of discrimination on gender-critical belief, has since been expelled from the party. “The Green Party is broken, as many great activists who have faced persecution due to their gender-critical beliefs will attest,” he tells The House.

Ali has instructed lawyers to take the party to court for unlawful discrimination for the second time. He is also exploring legal recourse to have his membership reinstated, enabling him to stand for the leadership.

“In 2021, I garnered 21 per cent of first preferences and would seek to run on a strongly gender-critical platform again – emphasising scientific objectivity in policy and prioritisation of freedom of speech as a way of doing politics differently,” Ali says.

While gender-critical councillors Amanda Onwuemene and Mothin Ali are also rumoured to be interested in standing for leader, one expelled member says Shahrar Ali is “probably the most prominent person in the party at the moment for gender-critical people to coalesce around”. Like many gender-critical Greens, however, Shahrar Ali has voiced support for the Ramsay/Chowns ticket.

“I have spoken to colleagues who say that they will leave the party if Zack is elected,” the expelled member adds. “It’s just hollow, shouty, student politics. I don’t think it represents professionalism.”

With the Greens now holding 859 seats across 181 councils, Garbett insists the party has drastically improved its operations in the last decade. Alongside elections for leader and deputy leader, all posts on its executive committee, GPEx, are up for grabs. Particular attention is being paid to the external communications co-ordinator – a voluntary role currently held by ex-MEP Molly Scott Cato – with comms seen by Greens Organise as a key weakness.

The financial situation is not looking good at all

Another area of potential reform is funding. With strict rules on funding, the party relies on membership subs and money from elected members, who donate part of their income to the local or regional party for staff salaries. Garbett says it would “fundamentally change us as a party if we accepted money from things that don’t align with our values”.

Insiders say the party’s finances are in a parlous state, however. The House reported last year that the party had spent £1m over four years fighting legal cases against its own members, who alleged the party had discriminated against them for their views.

“The financial situation is not looking good at all,” says a figure close to GPEx, who blames this predicament partly on the Green focus on “identity politics”. “A lot of the people who’ve been kicked out of the party because of identity politics have been older people who’ve always financed the party,” they add.

The House has since learned that GPEx has withheld membership fees, known as ‘capitations’, from flowing into local parties as is constitutionally required.

The payment of the 2022 and 2023 capitations to local parties were suspended “indefinitely” by GPEx to secure the party’s financial position in light of legal challenges and reduced income. In an email sent to local party chairs and treasurers before the general election, seen by The House, GPEx chair Jon Nott announced that – further to the suspension – these payments would be “cancelled altogether”.

Labour’s finances rely partly on affiliated trade unions. As well as taking some of its activists, could the Greens persuade its unions to break ranks?

“The bulk of it will always be from membership subs,” Greens Organise member Jackson says of its own funding. “We don’t want people to be able to buy influence. But it would also be quite nice to scale up and potentially have staff and have money flying around.”

On the possibility of unions affiliating to the Greens, he adds: “Hopefully some of them get there quite soon, because it certainly doesn’t seem like their affiliations with Labour are doing them any good.”

Zarb-Cousin reckons such new affiliations are “a very plausible thing that could happen in the next few years”, saying: “I’d love to see some of the unions that are not yet affiliated with a political party affiliate with the Greens. I’d love to see unions that are affiliated with Labour but have become disillusioned with Labour move over to the Green Party.”

Prime candidates for the former category are the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) and University and College Union (UCU), as well as the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), which was Labour-affiliated until it broke ties due to Starmer’s leadership. The latter type of union – those currently affiliated to Labour but frustrated – would bring more significant funds and political heft, but breaking the Labour-union link is a big ask.

Even while Starmer is being compared to Enoch Powell, still some on the left refuse to defect. Asked why, one Labour left source said: “The Green Party is not rooted in class politics whereas the Labour Party is, even though it’s frequently betrayed by the leadership. Labour has still got affiliation with 11 trade unions who represent millions of workers.”

Converting unions to the cause would not only unlock funds but also the support of the wider Labour left. The first step, however, involves a Polanski win. His supporters argue that a single leader is needed for effective media interventions, and that “you need to be online to win”, though they also describe being up against “establishment Greens”.

The switch from a “Countryfile Tories” focus to a wholly left eco-populist one is gaining momentum but will require a bold shift. 

Related

Disabled MPs Express Concern Over Labour Rule Changes Amid Backbench Anger

By Sienna Rodgers & Tom Scotson

15 May