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The Canary says it’s time to ‘back Zack’ in the Green Party leadership election

Voting in the Green Party leadership and executive elections is now less than 24 hours away. At midday on 1 August, ballots will open to members – where they’ll choose who is set to lead the party into the next two years.

In the last week leading up to it, the candidates standing to be leader of party have set out their final case to its 60,000-plus-strong membership. And some last-minute mudslinging has underscored the stark and significant differences between the two tickets you’d be hard-pressed to miss.

In one corner, there’s the vivacious natural orator, current deputy leader, and London Assembly member Zack Polanski. In the other – though they’d likely raise an eyebrow at the ‘polarising’ wrestling ring metaphor (shock-horror!) – is leadership incumbent and elected MP Adrian Ramsay, and fellow elected Green parliamentarian and dedicated former MEP and councillor Ellie Chowns.

Green Party leadership race: Zack Polanski’s moral compass over moderates

On Wednesday, Chowns and Ramsay warned in an interview with the Guardian (naturally) that Zack Polanski’s eco-populist bid could ward off moderate voters and risk sliding the Greens into irrelevance.

Part of this revolves around Polanski’s pitch now covering what’s likely to be a lot of similar ground in the new Jeremy Corbyn/Zarah Sultana Party.

Of course, sucking up to centrists and refusing outright to work with an emerging left-wing force for political change is what the pair think it will take to keep the Greens surging. However, Polanski has expertly exposed everything wrong with this approach. This is namely that it’s sacrificing moral compass for votes, marginalised communities for MPs in parliament.

And let’s be clear: nobody needs nor wants more mild-mannered moderates more concerned over maintaining and gaining seats than meeting communities’ real and vital material needs.

So I’ll start by setting out mine and the Canary’s position: it’s time to back Zack.

Polite won’t cut it

In a press release, Chowns reiterated their Guardian interview critique of Zack Polanski’s eco-populist campaign, stating:

To win under first-past-the-post, we have to connect with a wide range of voters. We do that not through polarising language that appeals only to a narrow segment, but with the language of fairness, compassion and hope for a thriving, sustainable future.

It’s hard not to feel like it’s a case of offending the polite sensibilities of a fragile ego’ed political establishment. And it’s painfully middle class.

An exchange between Chowns and Polanski on Pod Save the UK cements how it’s ostensibly, exactly that. Notably, Chowns spelled out what she and Ramsay mean then when they call Polanski’s campaign ‘polarising’:

The language of picking fights, it’s a very polarising language, and that’s the sort of thing that really puts people off. And it’s absolutely possible to be totally clear what you stand for, to challenge power. I don’t conceive of that as ‘picking a fight’. And we need to have a politics that’s about inclusion, we need to create a politics that’s about helping people to feel hopeful.

However, Polanski, with unapologetic fire shot back:

So I think this is a privileged position. I think ultimately the people in this country who are really suffering right now need people to fight with them, and they need to know that the Green Party are on their side. Yes to challenging power, but that’s picking a fight – that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I think the people in this country need us to connect with anger, and then turn it into hope. Turn it to solutions. But if you don’t connect with the anger first of all, then you miss people entirely.

The ‘privilege of not picking fights’ is it in a nutshell.

Adrian and Ellie’s timorous, weak sauce approach does the party dogged for years in accusations (largely accurately) of being too white, and too middle class, zero favours.

It gives the same energy as boomers and late gen Xers distraught by Bob Vylan, reeling back with haughty simulated horror that they “wouldn’t wish death on anyone”. Except of course, they do. Their silence, and refusal to speak out is taking a side – by failing to stand up to the oppressor.

We live in a world where an elite-owned corporate media frames a Glastonbury crowd chanting death to a bloodthirsty settler colonial military, illegally annexing and occupying land and committing unfathomably heinous and indescribable atrocities against the Palestinians their genociding into oblivion, as ‘hateful’ and ‘appalling’, rather than the force perpetrating these unconscionable acts. It’s problematic that the press frame Palestinian’s rights and lives as ‘polarising’ – as if it can both-sides a genocide.

So we’re well past the point where ‘polite’ words – call it what it is: hollow handwringing – will cut it. And that’s the case in so many instances for communities the state has purposely marginalised for decades.

Good ol’ centrism to save the day… not

This is ‘women won suffrage by sitting down and speaking politely’ vibes all over. And, it’d be laughable, if that timidity weren’t so dangerous for so many of us. Those at the sharp end of political and state violence have no choice but to fight for our lives. But Chowns demonstrated how hers and Ramsay’s leadership bid is detached from this reality.

Zack Polanski validated sidelined communities rightful anger, invoking a social justice slogan staple:

There’s a lot to be angry about right now, and if you’re not angry, then people aren’t paying attention.

By contrast, Chowns took pains to avoid uttering even the mildest synonym of ‘anger’, as if it were some dirty, dangerous word:

We need to be really, really strong in opposing things that are wrong. But at the same time, we also need to have conversations about complex and contentious issues, and we need to be able to at least sit down with people that we disagree with to understand why they’re at the position they’re at.

It was paternalistic gatekeeping writ large.

Try telling a chronically ill and disabled person the government is about to strip thousands of pounds in vital welfare not to be angry. Say that to children trapped in abject poverty under the weight of the Two Child policy on benefits. We’re allowed to be angry, and we’re entitled to fight back.

Of course, this is still Green Party politicians we’re talking about. And in fairness to both Chowns and Ramsay, they voted against the benefit cuts, the proscription of Palestine Action, and have opposed the Two Child cap. They continue to hold Labour to account in parliament for all manner of its now undeniable, inscrutably vile authoritarian tendencies.

Nonetheless, this infantilising doing ‘grown-up’ politics attitude just ain’t it.

Wooing Reform: we’re really having this conversation?

Moreover, who Chowns means to ‘include’ and what ‘contentious issues’ she’s referring to, also matters here.

In the press release, Chowns continued that:

Polling by YouGov shows that people who voted for all the other parties in 2024 are much more likely to consider voting Green next time than for a Corbyn-led party, and our ability to keep winning over voters from every other party is a huge strength in an increasingly crowded political landscape.

So, in a bid to court votes from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Tories, and Reform, it feels like Chowns and Ramsay are steering the Green Party in the direction of social conservatism.

Obviously, the party has always had its ‘Tories on bikes’ contingent. That is, environment-minded members with ‘traditional’ conservative-leaning values on social and cultural issues. Similarly, it has long attracted climate-concerned centrists. However, over the years the party has nourished its left, unreservedly anti-capitalist, and social justice-focused identity. It’s one Chowns and Ramsay seem content to do away with.

It’s not to say they’re careering the party to the liberal centre-right on all issues – or even most. Nevertheless, there’s clear socially conservative capitulation to win over some of these perceived floating voters.

But quite frankly, do Green members truly want a party packed with former Reform voters? They might very well be liberal-left-ish on economic and anti-establishment concerns. However, many will likely still retain a right-wing bent on social issues.

Throwing trans people under the bus for votes

One area in which this social conservatism is glaringly apparent is Chown’s and Ramsay’s position on trans rights.

Ramsay caused a stir earlier this year when he hedged on his own views during an interview on the Today programme. As a statement from the ever-unwaveringly principled Young Greens noted:

In this interview, Adrian was asked 5 times whether he believes trans women are women. He failed to give an answer to this question.

And now, it’s even more evident that Chowns and Ramsay are no allies to the trans community. In a hustings, Chowns seemed to throw her support behind the enormously problematic Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) guidance on trans rights:

Chowns struck out at Stats for Lefties for mischaracterising her speech:

However, plenty have pointed out it’s exactly what she implied:

 

Moreover, if the speech weren’t explicit enough, the LGBTIQA+ Greens collected the receipts. The party liberation group asked candidates to sign a number of pledges. Notably, in one, the Chowns-Ramsay joint ticket responded that (our emphasis):

We support our party’s policies as written that uphold the rights of LGBTIQA+ people, including the right for people to be able to self-determine their gender. We believe the current interim ECHR guidance was rushed and very restrictive, and clearly did not properly consider the impact on trans people’s lives. We also recognise that gender and biological sex are not the same thing and that the law does need to allow for some circumstances where services may need to be provided on a biological-sex basis, such as domestic violence refuges, prisons and some sports. Decisions on such provision need to be made based on evidence and listening to the experience of all those impacted, and in a way that ensures everyone has access to services that meet their needs.

A Green Party ‘appealing’ to Reform-lite and green Tory transphobes can’t call itself a serious force on social justice.

We do deserve better – and a Left alliance is only possible under Zack Polanski

At the last election, the Greens distanced themselves from electoral pacts. Years of ‘progressive alliances’ hadn’t landed them any further seats in parliament. However, arguably, under the first-past-the-post system, this was hardly surprising.

Despite this, to say these were a total strategic failure is a reductive reading of the results. As Remco van der Stoep wrote of the ‘Unite to Remain’ general election pact campaign for openDemocracy in 2020:

The Green Party’s best results were in seats where it was backed by Unite to Remain. While in other seats its vote went up by an average of just one percent, in Unite to Remain-backed seats there was an average vote share increase of 6.9 percent. The Green Party came second in two constituencies; both of these were Unite to Remain seats. Crumbs, perhaps, but a clear indication that the pact enhanced the realm of what was – or would have been – electorally possible.

But seeing the potential collapse of its left-leaning voters to the new Corbyn/Sultana Party, as in fairness, did indeed happen during Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Chowns and Ramsay want to stick to going it alone. They hope to ‘appeal’ to the middle ground voters of other parties instead. Yet, they seem loathe to recognise how this would drive out the Left. They fail to see how it could make the party into little more than another vehicle for failed liberal politics – just greener and with somewhat more progressive policy in particular areas.

A ‘collaborative and bold politics’

By comparison, Zack Polanski has now turned this anti-electoral pact approach on its head. He has already welcomed the prospect of an alliance with the rapidly growing Corbyn/Sultana Party. His response signified a spirit of cooperation and solidarity so often lacking from political discourse – and I want to see more of it:

It’s worth noting that under the Green Party’s more democratic policy-making structure, Polanski’s word on this isn’t the final say. And during its 2023 annual autumn conference, members broke ranks with its long decentralising tradition to hand the party’s executive new power over this. Specifically, Greens attending voted through a motion that enables the Green Party executive to force local parties to stand a candidate. Essentially, this throws a spanner in prospective local parties making agreements independently.

Nevertheless, the Green Party leader is a voting member of this. And if the membership votes Polanski in, it’s plausible to imagine it will also vote in similarly-minded members to the executive. Although, this is obviously not a guarantee given lower turnouts for many of these positions.

Fuck tribalism

But let’s get to the real issue at the heart of this. A party so caught up in the ‘business’ of winning elections loses sight of what it’s fighting for. That’s if it chooses to even fight at all – which, in the case of Chowns and Ramsay, looks increasingly unlikely.

The obsession with winning elections is everything that’s wrong with politics today. And I can’t shout this loudly enough: fuck political tribalism.

I want a politics that unequivocally puts people above party every time, no ifs, no buts. I want a politics that reaches out to the people establishment politicians have long sidelined and disenfranchised – that centres and uplifts them – but doesn’t speak for them. That goes for both the Greens and the new Corbyn/Sultana Party.

Standing up for people because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s electorally popular is the only way forward. The left doesn’t need to pander to its opponents’ arguments. It’s uninspiring, out-of-touch, and insipid centrism that paved the way for Reform. More of the same feeble, servile capitulation to the right-wing isn’t the answer.

The Left needs to boldly push outside this. It shouldn’t just move the Overton window of politically permissible, it should smash it altogether, and show voters the art of what’s possible. Under Zack Polanski, and through bold alliances with the new Corbyn/Sultana Party, the Green Party could play a part in making that happen.

Featured image via the Canary

By Hannah Sharland

This post was originally published on Canary.