Green Party leader Zack Polanski is on a mission to “make hope normal again“. And core to that is focusing on bringing people together rather than dividing them.

On 16 October, he did this by reciting the poem British from the late, great Benjamin Zephaniah:

British. pic.twitter.com/jnB0xVQ2Fw

— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) October 16, 2025

Below this, he called on people to:

Reject the politics of hate.

And this is what Zephaniah did as an inspirational public figure. He embraced the many diverse voices of modern Britain while calling out the powerful corporations exploiting ordinary people.

Migration is a normal and central part of human history. Indeed, there would be no humans in Britain if it wasn’t for migration. Before the British empire, migration came largely via invasions – from the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons to the Vikings and the Normans. And after centuries of imperial forces invading and abusing people around the world (and not really caring much about immigration), a Britain in desperate need of migration after World War Two asked these people to come and help the country rebuild.

Reject hate. Focus on the real problems.

The far right focuses on hating immigrants to try and distract us from the real problem of a few obscenely wealthy individuals accumulating extreme levels of wealth thanks to the poverty or suffering of others.

As the Canary has explained in detail before, Britain needs immigration. Because today, Brits are ageing and having fewer children. We also have big skills shortages – especially in key areas like health and care work. But for years, establishment parties have refused to invest properly in public services – preferring to line the pockets of their obscenely wealthy backers instead. And that’s where people from other countries have stepped in (despite increasing obstacles), contributing even more to public finances than average Brits.

There absolutely are issues with immigration. For example, few people would leave their home countries if Britain and other wealthy nations didn’t back wars, human rights abuses, workplace exploitation, and environmental destruction abroad. And the more obstacles Britain places on legal migration, the more vulnerable people seeking a better life are to the exploitation of unscrupulous criminal gangs. All of this needs to change.

Britain is not ‘full’. What it has is an undemocratic political and economic establishment with antisocial priorities.

As Zack Polanski told Reform’s Zia Yusuf last week:

The immigrants haven’t caused austerity. The same Thatcherite policies that you and your party support, and the Conservatives, are what have caused the devastation in this country.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.