Zack Polanski's Green-Left Populism

Zack Polanski's announcement that he's standing for the leadership of the Green Party has set the hares racing. Over the last couple of days, he's done the rounds of left media, had write ups in the Graun, and - predictably - attracted hostile commentary from the right wing Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News. My Bluesky feed, which heavily leans on left and progressive-types has witnessed an outpouring of support and not a few signing up to the Greens to back his candidacy. Could it be that we're finally seeing something positive happening on the left?

There's certainly the space for it. For a variety of reasons, which you can put down to sectarianism, foot dragging, and the continued fealty to Labour on the part of those MPs who've already been chucked out of the party, there is a void to Labour's left dying to be filled. So wide it is that even Nigel Farage has said opportunist things about nationalising steel and liking trade unions. Therefore, as a socially liberal party that has been pushing a radical left platform for a while now, it would be a dereliction of political duty to not tread where Jeremy Corbyn and the independents and sort-of groups around him fear to go.

What has ben encouraging about Polanski's pitch is a recognition of the Green's weaknesses and the kind of politics that have to be pushed to wrest the radical mantle away from the extreme right. He says the Green Party is "too nice", which reflects dominant sections of its base among the middle class. I.e. Professionals and the highly educated, tending to cluster in the public and third sectors. The moment however demands a left populism that centres wedge issues around class, inequality, wealth, and environmentalism. You might say an approach owing more to Marx than Malthus. And there is an appetite for this politics. On a larger scale, Corbynism has twice demonstrated it has more popular appeal than Starmerism at its height, and so there is a constituency for the taking. Next year's metropolitan local elections across Labour strongholds are going to be very interesting.

The question is can the Greens become the left alternative if Polanski wins the leadership? One can look around at the, to put things euphemistically, patchy record of the party's co-thinkers across the continent. In the UK, Brighton council, Mid-Suffolk council, and the Greens' performance in the Scottish government hardly heralded red dawns. But neither were they worse than your average Labour council, for whom attacking workers and slashing services have long been the norm - even before the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition imposed ruinous cuts on local government after 2011. The alternative path away from that trod by establishment green parties is that taken by the green-left parties of Denmark, the Netherlands, and the Nordic Green-Left Alliance. There are no insurmountable reasons why taking a Scandinavian turn is impossible.

But there are two difficulties an explicitly left wing party faces. The first can be more or less ignored, and that's the scepticism many on the established left - your writer included - has toward political organisations not explicitly based on class. This is unlikely to prove an electoral obstacle, but puts a ceiling on the numbers of established left wing activists a Polanski-led Green Party can attract. Though, to be honest, he's not waiting around for any of their approvals. Perhaps the politics of the electoral deed might sway them. The second is more substantial: the Greens' non-radical wing. This is best represented by the local government inroads made before Reform was anointed the establishment's anti-establishment party of choice, and was recently highlighted when current co-leader Adrian Ramsey went off-script in an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson and equivocated instead of pushing the party position on trans issues. There is a possibility that some of this layer could do a reverse Polanski and move from the Greens to the Lib Dems.

That said, there is undoubtedly a prize to be seized. With the extra-Labour left unwilling to move beyond marches and rallies, a radical Green Party that speaks to the interests of the rising class of workers, reflects the dominant socially liberal outlook of tens of millions, and is starkly posed as an alternative to the extreme right and what Labour are selling, could chime with the vibes of the moment and build that elusive left-populist insurgency this country's politics has so far lacked. Therefore, while I won't be joining the Greens, there's a good chance the tidal surge of a Polanski leadership could lift all our boats.

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