On the 19th October, the Green Party of England and Wales became Britain’s third-largest political party in terms of membership after leapfrogging the Conservatives, the most electorally successful political party of all time. Having surpassed 140,000 members for the first time with no signs of slowing, the Greens have even begun to overtake the governing Labour Party in nationwide electoral polls. At a growing 15% popularity, they have broken the 10% ceiling that seemed impregnable during their years of co-leadership and nimbyism which saw a hyperfocus on the ecological wilderness that left them squarely in the political one.
But this is not the Green Party of old. Its membership is no longer dominated by affluent ‘small c’ conservative voters concerned about the state of British wildlife but uncritical about the economic structures that have, over recent decades of neoliberalism, seen our rivers filled with sewage by private equity firms and our public transport squeezed for shareholder profit.
This is the Green Party of ‘eco-populism’, spearheaded by new leader Zack Polanski. Charismatic and controversial, Polanski is most importantly the first politician skilful enough to connect the climate catastrophe to the cost of living crisis in the minds of the British public. His party’s solutions seem radical to many; the nationalisation of our public utilities, abolition of landlords, and implementation of wealth taxes are all bound to raise eyebrows amongst those wedded to consensus politics. Yet, by successfully riding the wave of ‘Mamdani mania’ and showing that the New York mayoral candidate’s extraordinary grassroots and social media success was not simply a ‘one-off’, Polanski has been able to bring socialist politics back to the political table, albeit with a green face.
So, does this mean that the British left is back? That it might pose a threat to Nigel Farage’s seemingly inevitable waltz into 10 Downing Street in 2029?
For now, it seems unlikely. Although some modelling predicts that the Greens will increase their share of seats dramatically from 4 to 56 in the next election, Farage’s Reform is still projected to form a majority government in what would be an apocalyptic scenario for the left. The Greens catapulting their share of both votes and seats to become an established parliamentary party would mean very little in the grand scheme of mass deportations, the destruction of workers’ rights, and the dismantling of the welfare state by Farage and his billionaire backers.
Fortunately, however, time is on our side. Polanski has a solid foundation upon which to build; he received a near-dictatorial mandate in his party’s leadership contest, winning 84% of the vote. Since his victory last month, the Greens have more than doubled their membership numbers, which will enable them to loosen the purse strings at the next election after spending just £1.7 million in 2024 compared to Labour’s £30.1 million and Reform’s £5.5 million. Moreover, the fact that Polanski is not an MP who represents a particular constituency in Parliament, like previous co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, has left him untethered to the vicissitudes of Westminster. He has thus been able to engage with both traditional media and social media at a frequency only replicated by Farage himself, a man who often seems to forget that he actually does have a constituency to represent.
These media appearances have not been fruitless either. The Greens’ new leader has dealt firmly with Reform’s partisans, remaining stoic in the face of personal attacks and admitting his own guilt when necessary, especially with regard to a particularly distasteful run-in with a tabloid journalist during his previous career as a hypnotherapist. For now, at least, this seems to be all the ammunition that Polanski’s detractors have in their arsenal. Other attempts by the self-proclaimed ‘free speech warriors’ of the alternative right to censor his use of the term ‘fascist’ when describing Reform have fallen particularly flat in their irony. He might be a marmite figure, generating a huge amount of disdain from right-wingers who cannot help but engage with him and his ideas on Facebook and Twitter, but he clearly strikes a chord with an ever-widening political base that appreciate his unabashed communication style.
That is not insignificant. The Greens’ surge in the polls has already begun to reverse Britain’s shift to the right. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, in response to Polanski’s ardent campaigning for a 1% wealth tax on assets over £10 million, finally looks to be addressing inequality by imposing higher taxes on the wealthy in next month’s budget. Meanwhile, the Greens’ proposal to ‘abolish’ landlords, which garnered wall-to-wall media attention after their party conference, has already seen so-called ‘landlords’ champion’ Farage change his tune on the issue of social housing, now arguing that it should be reserved for British citizens rather than dismissing it altogether as just another relic of pre-Thatcher socialism.
No matter how small, these represent genuine policy victories for a political outlook that has experienced nothing but devastation since 2019, when Labour’s progressive manifesto was pummelled by the pithy ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. In the intervening years under the new leadership of Keir Starmer, who initially pledged to continue the Corbyn project but has since reneged on those commitments, the Labour Party has purged its socialist figures and elements. The party itself went from popular to managerial, hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of individual members but gaining billionaire support, and winning a landslide election victory on the promise of sensibleness and pragmatism. That promise never materialised.
It is for this reason that Britain’s left is so cautious and suspicious of false dawns, having watched the potential for a socialist premiership in 2017 evaporate within seconds of the exit poll just two years later. They are equally skeptical of Polanski and the green politics that he represents, distrustful of the conservative tendencies of Green MPs in rural seats who have blocked housing developments, the expansion of transport links, and even the construction of energy infrastructure in some instances. Indeed, it was always believed that the man who came so close to Downing Street eight years ago would be the one to bring the left back from the brink, that Corbyn himself would rescue us from electoral oblivion. Truthfully, however, the independent MP for Islington North has revealed his true colours in the years since. Although there is much to admire about his work as a Labour backbencher, he is painfully slow to act and undeniably unfit to lead. The urgency with which he talks of inequality, poverty, and affordability, as structural issues meriting immediate attention, has not been reflected by the urgency of his conduct.
This has become particularly clear after the recent developments surrounding ‘Your Party’, the socialist project launched by Corbyn alongside independent MP Zarah Sultana to create a grassroots political party ‘rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements’. After garnering 800,000 free sign-ups within a month of launch and generating an immense amount of public support, Your Party – still without a name, policy platform or leader – descended into chaos. Zarah Sultana, having blindsided the party’s organising team by publishing the membership portal without prior agreement, accused Corbyn and the other four independent MPs involved of operating a ‘sexist boys’ club’ and excluding her from party discussions. Although it seems that the dispute has since been resolved behind closed doors, the inability of both Corbyn and Sultana to maintain harmony within a team of just six MPs bodes poorly for the future of a nationwide socialist project. Furthermore, Your Party’s hyperfocus on democratising everything, including the name of the party itself, was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
The history of British politics is the history of strong leaders prepared to stand by their ideas in the face of overwhelming resistance. Britain’s most influential modern Prime Ministers – Clement Attlee, Margaret Thatcher, and Winston Churchill – are all proof of that, regardless of their ideological differences. Jeremy Corbyn, although an avowed campaigner and activist, does not fit that mould, never looking comfortable in a leadership role even at the height of his success. The British left needs to recognise that fact. For six years, it blamed Corbyn’s fate as Labour leader on the bogus claims of antisemitism levelled at him by the corporate media and the infighting from within the Labour Party on the issue of Brexit. Perhaps some of that culpability ought to have been directed inwards.
In the era of Zack Polanski therefore, there is no reason to saddle Corbyn with the trials and tribulations of leadership. There is also no reason to expect that the future elected leader of Your Party, Zarah Sultana or otherwise, will have more political cut-through than the new leader of the Greens. As a proudly Jewish man, Polanski is resistant to the same charges of antisemitism that hobbled Corbyn; he is thus free to adopt a widely popular pro-Palestinian stance whilst still clearly representing and supporting the diverse Jewish communities across the UK. And Polanski, a gay man, has gone to great lengths to set out his unequivocal support for the LGBT community, unlike the founding members of Your Party, whose independent MP Adnan Hussain has been accused of ‘transphobia’ by many on the left.
With that in mind, it is time for Corbyn and Sultana to stand down and ‘back Zack’. By joining the Greens, they would benefit from a party apparatus that already functions seamlessly and is growing rapidly, without having to build a socialist project from scratch that, as things stand, might not even be ready by 2029. The revival of British socialism will thus mean the death of certain socialist egos and the realisation that splitting the left-wing vote whilst creating unnecessary drama merely distracts from the existential urgency of the matters at hand.
The left finally has its ideas back on the table but it has also never had more to lose. It is now or never; and there is only one leader worth getting behind.
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