Special Report: Has Zack Polanski peaked?

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

This is a Global Production.

Jon Sopel (0:05)

Six months ago, after Gorton and Denton, after the local council elections, who would have bet against the Green Party? They were on a roll.

Lewis Goodall (0:16)

But as the Greens gather here in Brighton for their party conference, they are whispering darkly about their leader Zack Polanski.

Has this man, this insurgent of British politics, already peaked? Welcome to The News Agents.

Jon Sopel (0:39)

It's Jon.

Lewis Goodall (0:40)

It's Lewis. And we have stepped inside, away from the Glorious Beach, inside the conference centre in Brighton. And it is very busy, despite the fact that the Green Party actually basically told a lot of its activists to go, not come here and go to Hobart and St. Pancras. In fact, there's a little poster here, or Bannett says, stop reading this, go campaign in Hobart and St. Pancras, to elect our sixth Green MP, which of course would be Zack Polanski, because he's standing in Keir Starmer's old seat to try and really reinvigorate his leadership.

Jon Sopel (1:06)

Yeah, and just across from there, we've got the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, next to rewilding Britain. Doing some good business, that's them, I think it's fair to say. And if we just come round here, you've got the Policy Development Fair in this room, whatever the Policy Development Fair is, and you've got Policy Working Group Meetings in that room, which is then next to Young Greens, which is just here.

Hi there.

Lewis Goodall (1:34)

Trans Young Greens, next to that.

Jon Sopel (1:36)

Trans Young Greens, just next to that.

And this is the kind of general setup of the Green Party, and you've got Muslim Greens over there, and Global Majority Greens next to it. Global Majority is the phrase they're saying, that should be used for what once were called ethnic minorities in this group, but you should now call the Global Majority.

Lewis Goodall (1:58)

And I think the point about that is, well, it illustrates, is that this is a party which has been in transition, and a party which has been changing its identity. Of course, the Green Party have always had their locus traditionally on green issues, environmental issues, net zero, they were a sort of known, in a way, very often as a slightly sort of more environmentally conscious version of the Lib Dems, kind of like slightly cuddly politics. That's changed, it has become, under Zack Polanski, it has become a much harder edge party. You can see that it has become a coalition of wider left-wing interest groups and interests. In that sense, of course, it reminds me a lot, and maybe it's just because there are a lot of conferences here in that era, and I attended a lot of them, of the Corbyn era Labour Party, a lot of those same sorts of people, those sorts of interests, those sorts of political passions.

But, and that has obviously injected a great deal of energy into this party, and at various points throughout this year, given them a real poll boost, sort of absorbing that part of the Corbynite left. But there is a cost as well. This party has got bigger, but as a result, its politics has become more fractious, more disputatious, and this is a conference which is set to be dominated by a series of motions which are classic Corbyn era interests around Gaza, Zionism, Palestine, which is certainly dividing this party and risks on some level tearing it apart.

Jon Sopel (3:20)

Yeah, I mean, you know, the image of the Green Party as sort of a party of tree huggers, I think, has gone. I think that is kind of gone. It's the past. This place that was a kind of, I don't know, a safe base for if you wanted to express your disaffection with the other two main parties, you could go to the Green Party. And I think that is absolutely right about the sort of change in tone. I mean, coming in, you've got the leafleteers, which you'll get at any party conference and at Labour Party conference. It used to be, the people of the far left were on the outside and they were the one handing you the leaflets. The trots. On the outside, the trots, the militants, the kind of, you know, the Socialist Workers' Party. They were on the outside and they were trying to foist things on you.

And now, you come in and these are the main stands inside the conferences and the literature, you know, I got kind of, you know, Palestine, yes, it really is genocide. That was the first thing that was handed to me when I got in.