'We're the future, don't wait around for Corbyn and Sultana': Inside the Green Party conference
میدل-ایست-آی - 1404-07-12 17:07:59
'We're the future, don't wait around for Corbyn and Sultana': Inside the Green Party conference
It's the Green Party's moment and the membership knows it.
In mid-September, I was in the Bournemouth International Centre covering the Liberal Democrat party conference. The colour yellow featured prominently, and the mood was calm and genteel. It felt like a garden centre.
On Friday, less than two weeks later, I arrived at the same venue to find a distinctly different vibe. Now the colour green was everywhere. Few people were wearing suit jackets at this conference.
The attendees were also more diverse. They still skewed older, like the Lib Dems, but groups of young people roved around the venue together, many wearing keffiyehs in support of Palestine.
In the main hall, Green members ate vegan food and greeted old friends. It wasn't raucous like the Reform conference, where many people were drunk by midday. But the mood was energetic - celebratory and enthused.
When I interviewed Zack Polanski during his leadership campaign over the summer, he told me he wanted to be a sort of left-wing answer to Nigel Farage, a populist for the age of populists.
And his recent victory - with over 80 percent of the vote - has brought a wave of new popular and media interest in the Green Party. Polanski is on television daily and is a veritable social media star.
Twenty thousand new members have joined and the party announced on Saturday that the total membership has surpassed the Lib Dems.
"We're the only party that can take on the threats the country faces," Mothin Ali told me confidently. Ali is co-deputy leader of the party, along with Rachel Millward. They were elected with a majority at the same time Polanski became leader.
Like Polanski, Ali is a celebrity within the party and couldn't walk 10 metres through the conference venue without being stopped by a friend or admirer.
When I met him on Friday, Ali was wearing a thobe, blazer and skullcap. We sat down in the exhibition centre's main cafe. "We are cutting through," Ali told me.
"We went from 400 councillors to 850. We have four MPs. That's a fantastic foundation. It's a functioning party."
'The Greens are the future'
As the old two-party system breaks down, one added complications for the Greens is the new left-wing party being set up by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Labour MP Zarah Sultana. Temporarily called Your Party, it is set to have its founding conference in November.
How does Ali see this development?
"I have tremendous respect for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana," Ali said. "I'm disappointed they started their own party instead of joining us.
"We've got a charismatic leader. We have two deputies. The three of us look different and sound different. Together we represent this country. I don't think another party could replicate that.
"With the way [the new party] was set up, it feels like it's going to replicate old Labour. The Greens are the future."
The problems confronting the country are immense, Ali said.
"We've had the privatisation of key infrastructure. Train fares are at record highs. Trains don't even run on time. We have crumbling infrastructure and our NHS is underfunded. These are political choices."
This is strong rhetoric and notably focused on the economy. It fits with the current tone of the party, including Polanski's speech on Friday afternoon.
The leader ran through the aisle in the middle of the crowd and bounded onto the stage to rapturous applause.
The set-up was modest; unlike at the Reform conference there were no flashing lights or smoke machines. But Polanski's speech was loud and energetic.
He told the party faithful the country has been "failed by a political class poisoned by extreme wealth… a tiny few have taken our power, our wealth".
"Things must change," Polanski proclaimed. "And friends, it is time to take it back."
There was a definite environmentalist aspect to the speech ("clean rivers") but it didn't take centre stage.
"We will bring down your bills. We will cut the cost of living, and we will protect our NHS," he promised.
He condemned Reform leader Nigel Farage as a "Trump-loving, tax-avoiding, science-denying, NHS-dismantling corporate stooge". The crowd went wild.
Polanski received particularly loud applause when he accused the Labour government of being "an active participant in the murdering of the Palestinians".
"We must stop selling arms to Israel," he thundered. "We must stop sharing intelligence. We will do everything we can to stop the genocide."
Polanski also condemned the government's ban on direct action group Palestine Action as a terror organisation.
The crowd gave him several standing ovations. It was a wonder he didn't end the speech with a stage dive.
On Saturday, Gaza continued to be high on the agenda - with Polanski, Ali and other key figures in the party joining a march from the conference centre to the beach to demand the government sanction Israel.
'We don't have spin doctors'
It is widely believed that the Greens have transformed into a much more left-wing party. Emma Edwards, who leads the Green Party group on the Bristol City Council (the council’s biggest), gave me a different perspective.
She joined the party in 2017 because she believed in social justice, as she put it, and said it has essentially become better at articulating its existing strong economic positions. "Zack was elected and was able to communicate, to tell everyone that this is what we're about."
That isn't to say there haven't been changes: "The diversity of policy has increased. There are also a lot more young Greens and the party is more ethnically diverse."
Now, old-timers are having to adapt to the party's increased national prominence. “People in the Greens are massive geeks - many have science or engineering backgrounds. They join to make things better," Edwards said
"There are very few career politicians. We don't have spin doctors so we're having to learn how to be politically savvy."
A major task for the party going forward will be to hold a broad coalition together. Many of its voters are more focused on left-wing economic issues than the environment, while in some rural areas people care mostly about "saving the trees and valid environmental concerns", Edwards said.
"People are attracted to different parts of the party."
Ali, co-deputy leader, told me that "there might be some wealthy people in the party, but they're wealthy people with a moral conscience. They care about other people who are not as wealthy as they are".
Is the Green Party a broad church?
In the past two years, the party has certainly become more diverse. I spoke to Asma Alam from south Manchester, who is the Green Party's campaigns coordinator and sits on its executive council.
She has been busy: she is also co-chair of the Muslim Greens group and founder of Greens for Palestine.
She said the Muslim Greens have about 300 people on their mailing list and 100 active members. She is hugely supportive of Polanski: "Zack has been so supportive of Muslim Greens. He's so kind and humble."
She described Ali as a "real honest politician - he wears his faith on his sleeve".
"He was treated as a villain by the press when elected, but the Green Party stood by him. That meant everything to me.
"A year later he's a deputy leader. In what other party would that happen?" she asked.
"I'm in the right party. These are my people."
Alam strongly feels Muslims have a political home in the party and Ali agrees. But the one scandal during his campaign concerned his refusal to sign pledges by various groups within the party, including a pledge on LGBTQ rights.
"We have a democratic system of forming policy," Ali told me, explaining his decision, "where all members get to have a say, not specific committees. We should have party-wide debates."
He said some Green members called him a "sinister Muslim" and said "every Muslim should be tested".
So how broad a church is the Green Party?
Ali paused to think. "Are there things people aren't going to like about Muslims?" he asked. "Yes. But we have to see past our differences.
"There are some things Muslims, Jews and Christians will never see eye to eye with an atheist on. Does that mean they can't fight common battles?"
On how his Muslim faith inspires his politics, Ali quotes a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that the best of people are those who serve others.
"You've seen me around - I don't go looking for important people." Walking with Ali around the conference, I noticed he would stop to talk with anyone who greeted him or introduced themselves.
"Any person here is just as important as anyone else. That's the way I try and lead, to work and bring people with me."
Working with Your Party
Ali, like many other members, believes the Greens can play a crucial role in combatting the far right and reshaping British politics.
Alam's co-chair of the Muslim Greens group is Fesl Reza-Khan, who is the party's International Coordinator and sits on its executive committee.
He joined the party in November 2023, after Israel's genocide in Gaza began, because he believed the "other parties were manufacturing consent" for Israel's actions.
"Zack has exceeded my expectations. He's drawn a strong line in the sand and is showing us an alternative vision for this country."
Faaiz Hassan, who was Ali's campaign manager, is a former Labour member who joined during Corbyn's leadership and left in 2020 after Keir Starmer took over.
He is co-election coordinator for the party. "I started working in the Greens in January 2023," Hassan told me, "but when the genocide started I became very active in the party.
"I think the entire political spectrum has moved to the right. There is a massive space on the left. But the threat from the right is so severe that we need allies."
Will that be the new Corbyn-Sultana party?
"The Greens will be ready to work with Your Party," Hassan said. "The real delay is their timeframe.
"If Your Party is not standing candidates in the May 2026 local elections, then we hope their campaigners and voters can help the Greens."
Alam, meanwhile, said she was "saddened" that Your Party "are not a proper party yet, not organised".
In her view, at the next election the Greens "should only stand down for high profile candidates. They need to deserve our seats".
Ali himself wouldn't be drawn on whether agreements have been reached or not between the Greens and Your Party on how to approach elections. "Zack's had conversations with lots of people," he said.
"We don't know what this other party looks like. If it does emerge and there's a lot of overlap, we'll have to find some way of working together to make sure we can create an effective force."
Right now, though, for left-wing voters the Green Party looks like the biggest and boldest show in town.
