As Sir Keir’s government sinks to the depths of unpopularity, and the march of the populist Right—in the shape of Reform—seems to proceed unabated by the influence of a Left alternative, commentators have begun to wonder why it is that the Greens have seen such little improvement in their prospects. With the collapse of the old dominant parties in the recent local elections, during the course of which Reform gained over 677 councillors, while the Greens gained 44, the urgency of this question only increased. Some have been disposed to say that the problem is “messaging”, and although I agree that the Greens are not skilled advocates of left-wing ideas, I am yet inclined to think that the problem is more profound.
Before coming to a diagnosis, it is necessary to keep at the forefront of our minds the structural advantages with which the populist Right, in our country and elsewhere, is favoured. In the first place, as the populist Right is no enemy to capital—on the contrary, they promise to protect and augment its wealth—they are the happy recipients of donations from millionaires and billionaires. In the next place, the populist Right enjoys access to a powerful and extensive media network, exemplified by the likes of GB News, where Nigel Farage has long been a presenter, and which every day ensures that the message of the far Right reaches all corners of the nation. Besides, the ideological task of the far Right is considerably simpler than that of the far Left: the way has already been paved, by decades of work from the main parties of the oligarchy, to make immigration, refugees, and Muslims a substitute for confronting the true challenge of our age—that is, to defeat the capitalist class and put an end to the woeful consequences of its domination. The populist Right is thus conferred with a set of advantages which make it a real contender for power: and further, it does not have to draw upon the active participation of the masses so long as it enjoys the support of sections of capital.
The Left, if it intends to challenge the oligarchy, benefits from none of the aforementioned advantages. Its only weapon is the people themselves: their ambitions, their commitment, their money and their time. For any such party to succeed, therefore, it must be able to persuade a wide enough section of the working class, not only that it is a superior choice to the populist Right, but that it has a reasonable prospect of achieving its aims, or at least an intelligent plan for doing so. The request is not trivial: the Left asks thousands of people, many already suffering beneath the weight of misery and deprivation, to leave behind safer forms of individual resistance to exploitation, in favour of riskier and more demanding forms of collective resistance. How does the Left succeed in this endeavour?—one point of vital importance is to develop and present a theory of politics: a set of explanations of political facts, connected with a realisable programme for the future. If there is no theory of politics—if the struggles of the ordinary worker are not adequately explained, and a path not charted to liberation—one can little blame the working class for refusing to gamble on the Left, and instead selecting the populist Right parties, which do present a theory of their struggles—though a primitive and mistaken one—and do not call on workers for great sacrifices in order to get them elected.
It is here, I would submit, that the Greens commit their great error—and I must be understood as speaking of the current leadership of the Greens, not all their factions—that is, they neither own nor advocate a theory of politics. Their programme is not the product of a scientific analysis of British society and its institutions: it is simply a list of policies, most of them reasonable, but not backed by any clear understanding of political cause and effect.
This is perhaps to be expected: to be a ‘green’ does not imply any specific political principles, except a vague commitment to the protection of the natural environment: Greenism is therefore compatible with a wide variety of political opinions—from the far Left to the far Right—and though the English Green Party is firmly on the Left, it still suffers from a certain indeterminacy in its political understanding. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this.
Consider the statement issued by Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Greens, upon the decision of Joe Biden not to seek re-election. Denyer wrote: “I wish President Biden well and thank him for his many years of public service”, and praised this “personally difficult” decision as “a true sign of leadership.” These remarks provoked outrage among left-wing voters and campaigners: Biden had been arming and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The next day, by way of apology, Denyer issued a statement saying that “Biden is complicit in the slaughter of innocent people in Gaza”; she suggested that her previous statement was only intended to praise Biden’s decision to step aside. The bald contradiction between the two statements—one does not usually thank accomplices in mass murder for their public service—is instructive. If Denyer really perceived the force of the indictment she issued against Biden, she would never have made the first statement. A politician with an adequate theory of international politics, and hence an understanding of America’s role in the world, would not have committed such an error.
A similar case is the Greens’ treatment of the Ukraine war. In 2023 the Greens in England and Wales abandoned their long-held policy of withdrawal from NATO. The Green Manifesto tells us that “The Green Party recognises that NATO has an important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their security”, and although they desire more emphasis on “global peacebuilding”, and propose that NATO should only act “in defence of member states”, there is no mention of the disastrous consequences of NATO militarism, or NATO’s cringing subservience to the United States and its interests1. One does not hear Green leaders speak of NATO’s role in provoking the present war, or an appreciation of the historical context of its enlargement—none of which must, or ought, to imply support for Putin and his objectives. Mark well the suddenness of the policy change: it is as though there is nothing guiding Green policy but the whim of the moment.
As a final illustration, we might consider the Greens’ attitude to the standing of candidates during the last general election. The Greens insisted on standing candidates in every seat in England and Wales, even where Left independents, who had much in common with the Greens, had a high chance of victory; and regardless of whether the ensuing split of the Left-wing anti-Labour vote would lead to the victory of candidates implacably opposed to the programme of the Greens. In the worst cases, the Greens stood a candidate in Islington North against Jeremy Corbyn, despite fears that the race would be very close; and they may even have kept Wes Streeting in his seat in Ilford North, which he only retained by a few hundred votes: pro-Palestine independent Leanne Mohamad would likely have won if she had received the backing of Green voters. The Greens say they desired the benefit of short money, which is public funding for opposition parties, allocated according to the number of votes they obtain in a general election. But it is exceptionally unlikely, in view of the handful of seats with strong Left independent challengers, that this small increase of funding would warrant the conscious decision to undermine principled left-wing candidates. When Denyer was asked about this matter in an interview2, she said that the party conference made a commitment to stand a full slate of candidates, and felt that in the past, other parties had failed to collaborate with them for mutual benefit; she also suggested that no other candidates had shown signs of desiring collaboration in 2024. There was little indication that she regretted, in any respect, the absence of Green cooperation with the broader Left. Indeed, it seems that there has been virtually no attention given to the subject, because the party leadership appears to be averse to serious political thought, and therefore lacks clear strategic ideas.
There are early indications that this may be changing. Zack Polanski, the current deputy leader of the Greens, launched his campaign to become co-leader in early May3: he promises an eco-Populism which will challenge Sir Keir from the Left, and has expressly said that he would welcome socialist Labour MPs into the party. He has also condemned Israel for genocide, censured the British government’s complicity, and demanded an end to arms sales: all of which are admirable and encouraging positions.
On the other hand, Polanski’s political history is a ground for caution: in the past, he has expressed support for adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is designed to suppress criticism of Israel; and he once urged that Corbyn’s “absolute complicity” in antisemitism “is an existential threat” to the Jewish community4. It is possible, of course, that Polanski has changed his views; that he has evolved politically in the intervening years, and that he would now display superior judgment5. But it is equally possible that a politician, seeing the extent of mass mobilisation for Palestine, and the absence of legislative representation for the opinions of these crowds of people, might be induced by opportunist motives to win them over: from whence it would follow, that if there were sufficiently strong opportunist motives to abandon principled anti-imperialism, then that is what would be done.
On the hypothesis that Polanski is sincere, and prepared to withstand the abuse of the British ruling class, I do not doubt that his populism would be a great improvement upon the present confusion of Green ideas. But it would still be very far from the socialist principles we need, in order to overthrow the dreadful reign of the capitalist class, and to persuade workers to make the sacrifices necessary for the purpose.
- The manifesto at least says that NATO is far from “perfect”. ↩︎
- On Novara Media’s programme Downstream ↩︎
- The Greens have two co-leaders and a deputy leader, the co-leaders being the most senior party functionaries ↩︎
- https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1539/everyone-wants-to-join/ ↩︎
- Polanski has publicly said that “it was not helpful for me to assume that the Labour Party was rife with antisemitism when we now know that blatantly was not true”. ↩︎
