The Green Party is at a crossroads. Is it time they get angry?

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn9 hours agoShareSaveHelen CattPolitical correspondentShareSaveBBCWarning: This article contains strong languageThe video opens with some white cliffs and a politician standing on a beach. This isn’t Dover, and it’s not Nigel Farage (although the echoes with Reform UK are deliberate). Rather, it’s a campaign video for the Green Party’s leadership hopeful, Zack Polanski.Amid slick filming and a moody orchestral soundtrack, he delivers an animated and uncompromising message.Small boats, he declares, are an “obsession that has gripped the country,” blamed for a “crumbling” NHS and “obscene” rents, while people are told there’s no money left.”Well,” he says, looking into the camera, “I call bullshit.”The real problem, he continues, are the “super-rich and their yachts”.Zack PolanskiThe Green Party is on the brink of choosing its new leader. It usually does it once every two years and the contest can go fairly unnoticed. Not this year.Polanski, a former actor who is the party’s deputy leader, has turbo-charged the race, the result of which will be announced on 2 September.He calls his approach “eco-populism” and says it’s about being “bolder” and more clearly anti-elite in communicating social and economic issues, as well as environmental ones.This, he argues, is the style of messaging that the Green party needs to embrace. He wants to “connect with people’s anger” and then offer solutions, something the Greens are, in his view, often “too nice” to do. He worries it leaves them looking “out of touch”.”I think far too often in the past we’ve equivocated or we’ve been too worried to challenge wealth and power in as blunt a way as possible. This isn’t about shouting, it isn’t about being louder, it’s about being more effective.”Tried and tested vs a radical approachThe Greens had record success at the General Election last summer, going from one to four seats in Parliament and overturning large Labour and Conservative majorities. Together with the Scottish Greens and the Green Party of Northern Ireland, they won 6.7% of the vote.Now, the party is at a crossroads: does it stick with what it knows has worked or pick something more radical? And, given the candidates don’t really differ on policy, just how big a difference could new leadership make to the party’s national chances?Polanski, who is a member of the London Assembly, wants the Greens to replace Labour as the “party of the left”. But his opponents, the current co-leader Adrian Ramsay and new MP Ellie Chowns, who are running on a joint-ticket, believe Polanski would explode a winning formula that has brought them their greatest ever electoral success.Ramsay and Chowns were elected to Parliament in last year’s general election.Their style is, mostly, less combative – they believe it’s important that the Greens have broad appeal and that the party is seen to be at the heart of Westminster if it wants to bring about change. Ellie and Adrian 2025/PA WireChowns says many voters already have a “generalised warm feeling” towards the Greens, they just need convincing they’re a credible option.”It’s really the difference between populism and popularity,” she says.”What they need to know is that if they put their vote in the Green box on the ballot paper that’s got a really, really good chance of electing somebody.”Time to capitalise on discontent?Plenty of analysts, and Green party members themselves, have questioned why the party hasn’t already capitalised more on left-wing discontent with Labour, or why it hasn’t pitched itself more effectively as an alternative to the traditional parties, in the way Reform UK has.Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn who joined the Greens in 2022, is a founding member of Greens Organise, a group that wants the party to take a more socialist stance. He argues that it is “inexcusable” that the party hasn’t made a breakthrough in the polls since the election.Like Polanski, he believes that voters understand the party’s environmental credentials and so it needs to highlight its policies on the cost of living, inequality and taxing wealth over work.”It’s not just about saying we support those things, it’s about how you frame that argument: who are the enemies? Whose side are you on?”Ian Forsyth/Getty ImagesFormer Green party councillor Rupert Read, who is an environmental philosopher and a co-director of the campaign group Climate Majority Project, says a lot of Green party policy is left-wing, but adds that this is often the result of “making green policies that work for ordinary people”.”You need to come from a starting point that is not dogmatically and self-avowedly left. If you do there’ll be a strict ceiling on the level of support which is possible.”Ramsay and Chowns make a similar argument. Ramsay says that Polanski is “about appealing to a narrow base of activists,” which he and Chowns argue isn’t enough to win in the UK’s first past the past electoral system.More from InDepthChowns also believes that Polanski’s approach is too similar to strategies that ha …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]