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The left case for joining the Green Party now

Sixty Red-Green seats in a hung parliament could force Labour to choose between the death of centrism or accommodation with the left — but only if enough of us join the Greens by July 31 and support Zack Polanski’s leadership, writes JAMES MEADWAY

Green Party Deputy Leader Zack Polanski AM speaking at the People's Assembly Against Austerity protest in central London, June 7, 2025

WHY join the Greens, and vote Zack Polanski? For me, the case was made when I saw Nigel Farage standing outside the British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, waving union leaflets and declaring himself to favour its nationalisation. 

Implausible it may be for this lifelong Thatcher fan to come out for public ownership, the photoshoot crystalised perfectly what the left in this country has been getting so badly wrong since last year’s election. 

It should have been us! It should have been a leader of the left rushing up there, press in tow, setting the terms of the national debate, winning the plaudits by seizing the initiative — the government nationalised British Steel just a few days later. It is Reform now polling at 23 per cent or more, and Farage being spoken of as the next prime minister. 

The 2024 election had delivered an extraordinary election result for the non-Labour left. Candidates to the left of Labour won over two million votes. Four Green MPs and five pro-Gaza independent MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, won their seats: the greatest haul of non-Labour left MPs since universal suffrage, bigger even than the old Communist Party won at the peak of its success in 1945. 

Keir Starmer had finagled a landslide win on fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn lost with in 2019: a “sandcastle majority” for a prime minister who was barely tolerated when he entered Downing Street and has only become more unpopular since, presiding over a government notable for its incompetence, cruelty, and cowardice.

The tide has turned on Labour, and then some; the sandcastles threaten to wash away with the next election, Labour’s wafer-thin constituency majorities turning even one-time safe seats into viable wins for its opponents. There has never been a more opportune moment for the left outside of Labour in my lifetime, or indeed in anyone’s lifetime.

The most extraordinary prize is being dangled in front of us: just as the old Atlantic order breaks down, with JD Vance telling Europe we are now on our own, and just as the old neoliberal world-system disintegrates, Trump’s tariffs acting as the final blow, we have the chance to end the century-long domination of Labourite politics over the English left, and to do so on the basis of a clear, principled break with the economic and strategic failings of our own elite: opposition to wars and genocide abroad; action against the wealth hoarders at home; and a firm defence of our public realm and living standards against the depredations of climate change and profiteering.

For decades, Labour’s old base of support has been breaking from the party. New Labour was decisive: deindustrialisation under Thatcher hollowed out communities, but left Labour’s heartlands politically intact. Under New Labour, another 1.5 million manufacturing jobs went, but now the party’s political base went with them. Safe seats in the north turned steadily marginal — driven as much by falling turnout as actual shifts in support. 

New social layers were pulled sharply into left politics, notably including the very large base of public-sector employees, who now make up the great majority of trade union members, and, after the financial crisis, a generation (and more!) of insecure, downwardly mobile, poorly paid younger workers, some with university degrees, who live mainly in our larger cities and towns, mainly forced to rent. Corbynism spoke most clearly to these new layers, but had less success with the old. Now Starmer is alienating even this new layer.

The geopolitical shifts are lined up with the sociological. The political breakdown matches the economic decay of the so-called “cost-of-living crisis.” Everything is for the taking. The mobilisations for Gaza have been extraordinary; their impact, visible; but as every protester surely knows, to demonstrate against the government is not enough: we need national political leadership and organisation that can match the moment — that can, ultimately, pose itself as an alternative government.

Yet the left have, until now, abandoned the field, apparently content to merely observe events and perhaps pass critical comment on them. The Greens had contrived to settle back into their role as the Lib Dem B Team, content to pick off a few more council seats here and there while “asking difficult questions” of the government, no doubt well-meaning but far short of the potential. Attempts by those around Jeremy Corbyn to establish a new party have gone nowhere as yet. As we have drifted, the vacuum has been filled by Reform.

It required someone to seize the initiative, and stake out a bold claim on an alternative direction. Polanski, the Greens’ deputy leader on the Greater London Assembly, has done that. He has spoken out for Gaza and against militarism; he is an advocate for the wealth tax and against welfare cuts; he has, like Zohran Mamdani, centred the cost-of-living crisis in his campaigning, in what he calls “eco-populism.” 

The Greens themselves are a party in flux: polling now shows their voters are consistently lower income than other parties, and more likely to be younger. Of the 40 seats where the Greens came second, 38 are currently held by Labour. If Polanski wins, these will be the primary targets.

What does a strategy look like? We should think big here, just as Reform are doing. The Greens are pulling in votes in Labour’s former heartlands, like Wirral in Merseyside, or in Harehills, Leeds, where Mothin Ali won a thumping victory. 

But in other parts of the country, perhaps 30 or 40 seats, it will be independent lefts with a strong base who have the best claim — maybe even a new left party, if one is formed. Call that 60 or more seats where an organised, united, Red-Green campaign can win together, just as France’s New Popular Front did last year. 

Sixty seats in a hung parliament, or even one where Labour has lost its majority, is a powerful, even decisive bloc — the sort that can win serious concessions, open up the question of government representation, and ultimately force Labour itself to choose between the death of centrism, or the new left.

We have already wasted too much time. Polanski has seized the moment. The rest of us need to step up: join the Greens by July 31 to vote for him, and his victory can be a decisive step towards a historic political breakthrough.

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