In the end it was a walkover. Zack Polanski, who championed a turn to the inner-cities, trounced Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay, the two rural MPs by 20,411 votes to 3,705. He will be the new Green Party leader.
Polanski’s campaign represented a significant shift. His platform – calling for wealth redistribution, massive investment in public services, and a principled stand against the genocide in Gaza—articulated the genuine anger of those alienated by Keir Starmer’s pro-business government.
In his acceptance speech Polanski declared his ambition: ‘We’re not here just to be disappointed by Labour. We’re here to replace you.’
He and others listed the Greens’ policies that many would like to see in place of Labour’s: nationalisation of water; unbanning of Palestine Action; arms embargo on Israel; a wealth tax. He reeled off recent by-election victories in Cardiff, Newcastle and South London, and even dropped that he was off to visit the United Voices of the World union afterwards.
What’s not to like, you may ask. Well, the fundamental flaw of Polanski’s politics lies not in the demands themselves, but in the strategy to achieve them. His programme is one of radical petty-bourgeois reforms, not socialism.
It seeks to pressure the capitalist state to act against its own interests: to tax the rich, to renounce imperialist warfare, and to dismantle the energy sector that fuels its growth. But the state is not neutral; it is an instrument of class rule.
Even the Green New Deal, the political jewel in their crown, seeks to halt environmental destruction by means of ‘green capitalism’, managing the symptoms, while leaving the disease—private ownership of the means of production—untouched.
What Polanski’s ecopopulism stands opposed to is a) an understanding of the working class as the fundamental force for change, and b) a commitment to fight for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Like all capitalist parties—Labour and the nascent Your Party included—it defends the sacrosanct right to own and profit from private property. As such it is an obstacle not an aid to working class advance.
