The Green Party must choose its base
Now the nomination period has ended, the race to lead the Green Party is officially Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns versus Zack Polanski.
Informally cast as a referendum on the party’s electoral strategy—whether it will chip away at marginal seats with locally tailored initiatives or pivot into the mass politics of so-called "eco-populism"—there are contradictions at the heart of both candidates’ campaigns.
Last year, Ramsay came under fire after blocking the construction of wind farm pylons in his Waverley Valley constituency despite his party’s advocacy of clean energy. The co-leader sought to justify his position by appealing to unspecified alternatives—a favourite among politicians who know Britain has the least affordable energy in the world but realise development is widely unpopular with the electorate.
Chowns’ mind is similarly with her constituents. During the last general election, she campaigned on cleaning up the River Wye and its tributaries, acquiring extra rural funding, and opposing the last government’s decision to liberalise neonicotinoids, an insecticide harmful to bees. She embedded herself in local organisations, most notably the Herefordshire Beekeepers Association, and won the support of local groups like Friends of the Wye.
The more progressive elements of the party’s platform weren’t so much watered down as omitted; Ramsay and Chowns’ seats are in ‘Deep Blue’ territory— Tory and Eurosceptic.
While excluding said elements makes sense when trying to win such seats, it does mean their co-leadership would have a vested interest in resisting any substantial leftward shift— alienating the influx of left-wing support the party has gained over the past few years.
Herein lies Polanski’s appeal, who embraces every issue in the vast cluster of progressive leftism.
Polanski justifies his “unapologetically pro-migration" platform by citing labour shortages and Britain’s languishing fertility rate. Acknowledging the pressure on housing created by immigration, he proposes a campaign of housebuilding to increase supply and lower prices.
Whether the party would co-sign that last part under Polanski’s leadership is beside the point, why does the anti-neoliberal candidate’s pitch sound like it could’ve been plucked from the Institute of Economic Affairs?
But while Ramsay and Chowns struggle to weave their localised campaigns into a grand national strategy, and Polanski labours under neoliberal dogma in his one-man crusade against corporate power, the party also must grapple with a collapse in environmental salience, which has declined from its high point in October 2021.
At present, the most pressing issues to the electorate are wealth, health, and immigration. Even voters aged 18-24, the demographic most favourable to the Greens, have shifted their focus towards other matters—mainly the cost of living but also healthcare, housing, and immigration, which half of said cohort now regards as too high.
Simultaneously, climate action nevertheless remains the most appealing element of the party's platform, outstripping Gaza – support for which was primarily absorbed by independent candidates, such as Jeremy Corbyn, whose new leftwing party, as per recent polling, would harm the Greens more than Labour.
The party could theoretically cut its losses by going for Polanski, but why vote for “eco-populism” when you can vote for Corbyn? Polanski himself seems to be floating the prospect of an electoral alliance, knowing he doesn’t wield Corbyn’s political capital.
As such, the vote is more than a choice between picket-signs and suits-and-ties, but a referendum on the extent of the party’s enmeshment with omni-causal progressivism; potentially destabilising the party’s hold on its Deep Blue (but environmentally-friendly) seats—half of its hard-won parliamentary presence!
For some, this makes sense. It would be foolish not to move into the gap left by Labour and insufficiently filled by the Liberal Democrats. It’s not the biggest market, but it’s more accessible. Moreover, what good is a ‘centrist’ Green Party, palatable to the economically privileged, when the Liberal Democrats are not only on the rebound but have made ecological concern key to their platform?
What remains clear is that the Greens’ current strategy isn’t optimal. The coleadership of Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer represented an attempt to unite the “realist” and “fundamentalist” wings of the party, and while they’ve cultivated domestic peace—barring a clash over Trans recognition—they’ve yet to secure the support of the wings’ adjacent national blocs. Gains at the most recent local elections were underwhelming, even backsliding in strongholds.
More than a choice between professionalism and activism, the leadership race is haunted by the same question that haunts Green parties worldwide: besides the environment and its activists, exactly what—and whom—does the party stand for?
Samuel Martin is a freelance journalist covering politics, society, and global affairs.
