Green New Left

Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, says he wants to replace Labour. That still seems unlikely, but if it were to happen, this is what the early build-up might look like. The party’s membership has more than doubled since Polanski’s election in early September, overtaking the Conservatives, and some polls show them level-pegging with both Labour and the Tories (all far behind Reform). Next May, local elections in London and other big cities could see a realignment in Britain’s political map – a mirror image of Reform’s sweeping gains this year.

The Green Party has always been broadly progressive, its radicalism never tempered by time in government. But it has traditionally eschewed class conflict. For an era of polarisation and anti-establishment sentiment, it has spoken about values too much and interests too little. As Starmer drove Labour to the right, the Greens argued for a wealth tax and against the genocide in Gaza. Polanski’s pitch in the leadership contest, in which he got 85 per cent of the vote, was an attack on billionaires and landlords. Where once the aim was incremental electoral advance, it is now to challenge for power.

The Green surge confounds many commentators because it defies neat classification. Sceptical Marxists seeking to highlight the Greens’ inherently middle-class nature are liable to find a membership and voter base that’s overwhelmingly young, financially struggling and exploited by landlords and employers. Centrists and conservatives looking for hippies to make fun of will find some, but they must also contend with the party’s now slick media performances and ability to win rural seats. Polanski is a former Liberal Democrat who talks about expropriating the rich; the Greens are a small environmentalist party transforming into a mass party of the left.

The political character of Green parties has always been more contingent than either they or their detractors would like to think. In Germany, a party with roots in the New Left gradually became part of the political establishment. The Scottish Greens passed a motion at their conference this year declaring their German and Austrian counterparts ‘complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza’. The French Greens are on the moderate wing of the New Popular Front. In Greece, the Greens joined with Syriza. In Portugal, they are in a semi-permanent alliance with the orthodox Communist Party. The Italian Greens have swung between the centre and the radical left. The Irish party used its record result in 2020 to prop up a right-wing government dominated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

This is not to say that the Greens in England and Wales are an empty vessel; it’s no coincidence that they are beneficiaries of this moment. The British left has a weakness for hero worship. During Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership, a culture of loyalism created a hostile environment for dissent and made it harder to re-evaluate strategy. Your Party’s dramatic meltdown this autumn, which culminated in Corbyn and his co-leader, Zarah Sultana, threatening to sue each other on social media, was the logical conclusion of a political method that inflates egos and empowers inner circles at the expense of rank and file democracy.

By contrast, the Green Party has a well-tested commitment to internal democracy and pluralism. While Polanski may be highly regarded by party members, he is at pains to point out that he is not in charge. Policy is set by conference, and the relative lack of sectarian drama means that new members (of which I am one) generally find a friendly welcome.

The incumbent structures, however, were designed for a small organisation of enthusiasts. Green Party conference does a good impression of an organisation trying to filibuster itself. All 150,000 members now have the right to vote at it, and to submit motions individually. Debates on uncontentious proposals, and small points of language, can drag on if any attendee wants them to. A byzantine system of prioritisation meant that this year we were treated to a discussion on banning the release of helium balloons outdoors, while motions on Ukraine, trade union strategy and electoral alliances fell off the agenda. The party is decentralised to a fault. It has no authoritative centre. The elected leader and two deputies act as spokespeople, while formal power is split between the Executive Committee and the Green Party Council.

Greens Organise, which was formed last year to co-ordinate the left wing of the party, has only 1200 members, and will have to find its place in a party in which factional organising has rarely taken off. Polanski will need to be supported without being iconised. ‘Eco-socialism’ is the tendency’s watchword, but exactly what it means still needs working out. So does the balance between electoralism and building wider movements. And the party needs an answer for how to oppose cuts if it ends up running councils in an era of austerity: in Brighton and Bristol, where it has been in power, its track record is mixed.

A leftward-moving Green Party will also have to decide how to relate to the new left party forming under Corbyn and Sultana. The political dividing lines are blurry. Sultana is keen to point out that the Greens do not favour breaking off all diplomatic relations with Israel (they merely back full-scale sanctions) and is keen to contrast her opposition to Nato with the Greens’ current policy of working within the alliance. How widely these divisions will resonate, especially given that the Greens are likely to change their policy on Nato next year, seems doubtful. On almost every other question, the platforms of the parties are likely to be very similar, and they will be competing for the same pool of voters. Failing to negotiate an electoral alliance could prove fatal to both.

None of the challenges or opportunities for the Greens are wholly new. Anti-capitalism and environmentalism are common bedfellows. But both the party’s activists and its sceptics would do well to avoid reading its fortunes off a script written abroad or in the past. For more than a hundred years, the Labour Party has had a monopoly on political representation on the British left. That is now breaking down.