The Green party members in Bournemouth at the weekend were, largely, exuberant. More than one person I spoke to used the word “joyful”. “The energy is amazing,” said Jean Lambert, the former London MEP. “It’s exceeded my expectations,” said the new leader, Zack Polanski. “Even the most unfriendly journalist can’t find anyone that isn’t fired up and ready to go.”
Polanski himself contributed to this feeling. He has a talent for expressing members’ views clearly and without fearing how the rightwing press might respond. The recent boost he’s brought to the party’s profile combines the gnawing anxiety produced by rising Faragism, the experience of watching a genocide in real time, anger at inequality, Keir Starmer’s move to the right and profound climate anxieties, with an overwhelming feeling of relief: “thank God someone’s saying this.”
Where once there was a nervousness about defending controversial but internally popular policies such as drug decriminalisation or denouncing Israeli “apartheid”, the party has now abandoned this caution – and members love it. Standing ovations used to be a rarity at Green conferences. Polanski got multiple.
He benefited from a surprising consensus about external messaging – his speech focused on ending what he called “rip-off Britain” by nationalising public utilities and taxing wealth to fund public services such as childcare. Prominent members I spoke to from across the party’s spectrum largely agree that this is the right approach.
The two new deputies – Rachel Millward and Mothin Ali – contributed, too. As Alex Armitage, a councillor with the (independent) Scottish Green party in Shetland, who travelled to Bournemouth for the conference, said, it was their speeches which “emotionally grounded and unified the party”. When Millward reworked the old “first they came for the …” poem to add lines about how people fought back, when Ali talked about telling his son that he thinks he isn’t a good politician, but he hopes he’s a good man, many members were in tears.
Part of the reason for this level of emotion is the party’s recent success. It’s grown from 58,000 members in December to 86,000 today. Just six years ago, it was consistently polling at around 2%. Now, that’s above 10%. The number of Green councillors has gone from fewer than 200 to nearly 900 over the same period. The number of MPs has gone from one to four.
Partly, it comes from the feeling of moving in the right direction in other ways, too. Many members have long been concerned about the party being overly white. While that’s still true, there were, as party chief executive, Harriet Lamb, said to me, “more global majority Greens at this conference than ever before”. An anti-racism policy, described by another senior official as creating “a toolkit for unpicking the structures of racism”, internally passed overwhelmingly, and Polanski told me that 30% of people on the party’s “pathway to parliament” scheme are from the global majority.
What’s also important is that, for many members, the last few annual conferences have been – as more than one person said – “horrible”, marred by transphobic behaviour. Polanski highlighted the difference this year. “When someone’s won 85% of the vote when they are LGBT and explicitly LGBT inclusive,” he says, “I think that is about as strong a mandate as the party can give to say ‘we’ve moved on from those days’, and actually now let’s focus on the cost of living, and inequality and the climate crisis”.
Some motions were more contentious – a policy entitled “abolish landlords” (which might have more accurately been called “phase out the need for landlords”) passed. There was some opposition to a motion calling for the Israeli military to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, but that too passed.
But, mostly, the party was focused on steering activist energy into winning new seats: it’s now confident of getting at least one Welsh Senedd member in May, and aiming for two. London’s local elections will be a big focus. And it’s hoping to win mayoralties in Hackney, Norfolk and Suffolk, and Sussex and Brighton – in the latter two, against Reform – in the latter, Millward herself is the candidate.
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The risk now for Polanski is that expectations are stratospheric. He’s going to have to navigate more vigorous attacks from opponents, more journalists digging up scandals – and a complex relationship with Jeremy Corbyn/Zarah Sultana’s Your Party.
How he does so – and whether the Greens can organise fleeting enthusiasm into sustained activism – will define whether this is a passing moment, or a new movement capable of changing the country.
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