Zack Polanski’s election as Green Party leader on his platform of ‘eco-populism’ has led to a surge in support for his party in both the polls and membership.
By Paul Callanan
Enthused by his pledges to take on “vested interests” and “tax the rich”, Green membership has now reportedly risen to over 150,000. Many young people in particular are excited, being turned toward the Greens on this basis.
Socialist Alternative – revolutionary socialists organised in Your Party – welcome any challenge being put to austerity politics and racist scapegoating, whoever it comes from. Unlike the Greens, Your Party will, we hope, be established based on explicitly socialist principles and a commitment to furthering the distinct interests of working-class people. This is a very important difference with the Greens, which should have many practical implications for how the party is organised and the political platform it fights on. Nonetheless, we of course support cooperation with other forces on the left, on a principled basis, where this can be helpful in building the struggle against cuts or the far right.
However, the big question following Polanski’s victory is, what will the leftward shift in rhetoric and ‘storytelling’ his leadership represents mean in practice? Will it change what Green Party politicians do with the power and platform they have in the council chamber or in Parliament? Unfortunately, the concrete record of the Green Party has not been positive on this account. This has been shown particularly around the question of council cuts.
Green-led cuts in Bristol
The Green Party currently runs Bristol City Council as a minority administration. This is a major urban centre, the ninth largest in the UK, with almost half a million residents. What a Green council does running a city like this is therefore a particularly important test. But the Greens also lead 11 other councils across the country, and the party is involved in coalition leadership of many more. This is the area where the Greens could have the most immediate impact in realising elements of their programme and taking on the Starmer government, which has doubled down on the Tories’ decimation of local government.
However, to take the case of Bristol as an example, the Greens’ radical rhetoric has rung hollow. Last March, the Green group leading the council made £50 million worth of cuts to services – including children’s social services, mental health, domestic abuse support services as well as reducing bin collections to once a week. And members of the supposedly anti-austerity council leadership expressed “pride” in their budget while doing so.
Many may say ‘but these cuts were made before Polanski became leader, he is changing the party’. However, this does not appear to be the case. Far from challenging cuts-making councillors within his own party, he has defended them saying:
“I wouldn’t say I’m concerned, but I am aware. I’m absolutely confident that the Green-led council will keep telling that story of austerity, which is ultimately being fiscally responsible, running the council in a balanced way that makes those decisions, but also never taking the eye off the ball, that this Labour government should never get away with the fact that they have squeezed councils so badly that these councils have had to make those decisions.”
However, ‘telling the stories’ is not going to be enough to keep working-class people in Bristol in their jobs or provide the vital services they need. What is needed is action to defend those jobs and services.
This point has been put to Polanski at public meetings across the country. When challenged in Manchester if he would instruct Green councils to implement needs budgets (based on the needs of communities, not imposed spending limits) in-line with Unite the Union’s policy and mount a mass campaign to get council funding, he had this to say:
“If councils do no-cuts budgets – let’s talk about Bristol in particular – what happens is they effectively down tools, and then the government comes in and then do all the cuts anyway. Then the councillors actually have nothing to do about it, and it can be even worse than actually making the cuts in the first place.”
A defining question
This is the same logic we hear from the rest of the pro-capitalist establishment parties – Labour in particular – when challenged on their pro-austerity policies in local government. Hiding behind the threat of commissioners to justify their attacks on the working class.
The fact of the matter is councillors do face a choice. Do you stand with the working class and reject austerity, or do you side with big business and implement cuts?
What the Greens’ approach belies is a belief that political power comes primarily – even solely – from elected positions and the legal powers they are granted by the capitalist state. But when genuine socialists have won power in local councils, from Poplar in the early 1920s to Liverpool in the mid 1980s, they used their elected positions to act on behalf of and to mobilise working-class people to fight. This approach stemmed from an understanding that workers themselves have power, and that when this is brought into play it can change the rules and make possible the allegedly ‘impossible’.
The Poplar council ‘rates rebellion’ which first coined the slogan “better to break the law than break the poor” was ultimately successful. It forced a major transformation in the ways councils were funded, in favour of poorer and more working-class areas.
Liverpool’s 47 rebel councillors, under the leadership of Militant, a predecessor organisation to Socialist Alternative, won £60 million in extra funding for the city from the Thatcher government by setting a budget based on the needs of the working class and mobilising a mass struggle behind it. If a Green (or Your Party) council were to take a similar stand today, refusing to make cuts and mobilising workers to fight for the funding needed from central government, this weak and unpopular Starmer administration would face an immediate and major crisis in how to respond, with huge pressure for it to grant adequate funding.
The unions
This issue is also nothing new for the Green Party. In 2013, GMB union members took strike action against the then Green council in Brighton over attacks on pay and conditions. The response of the Green MP Caroline Lucas was to organise a “Community Clean Up”, effectively a strike-breaking operation.
These profound political mistakes are not accidental, but are connected to the fundamental nature of the Green Party. The reality is that it is not a party rooted in the working class connected to our trade unions and our communities. But if they aren’t prepared to fight cuts at a local level, how can we trust them to do so at a national level?
Your Party must stand against council cuts
This is what Your Party needs to avoid becoming. We can make a start by adopting a program against council cuts, along the lines of those supported by local government trade unions such as Unite and UNISON. This should state that councils should not accept or pass on cuts. Needs budgets could be set, where necessary making use of reserves and/or borrowing powers. Any sort of electoral alliance in May 2026 elections involving Your Party, whether with the Greens or otherwise, should include this as a basic ‘red line’ agreement.
Alongside refusing to pass on cuts in the council chamber, a mass campaign should be mobilised by councils along with trade unions and community campaigns to win the funding back from local government taken away because of austerity.
This is something that Zarah Sultana, in contrast to Polanski, has been quite strong on. Unfortunately, some major figures on the left have sought to dismiss this possibility. For example, Owen Jones recently asked “what’s the difference to what would happen to a council which refused to set a budget now compared to a council in the 1980s or 1920s?” in response to Sultana’s bold stance, clearly implying that history shows fighting cuts is no use. In fact, the reality is the opposite.
For Your Party to develop as a genuine working-class, anti-austerity and socialist party, we need to learn from how not to do it. Our words need to be matched with action.
