An olive shade of Green?

Forces on the British left are finally stirring. The announcement of Your Party, albeit long-awaited, organisationally fraught and with an uncertain future, has shown the strong support for socialist politics. At the time of writing, 900,000 people had signed up for the project announced by the left MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, with supporters establishing local groups and organising rallies even before the party has formed.1 However, another left-led party is vying to provide political leadership. This, of course, is the Green Party of England and Wales; Zack Polanski, the insurgent “eco-socialist” candidate, is now elected as the Party’s leader, with a decisive 84.6 percent of votes. It is certainly true, as James Meadway, the left-wing economist and former adviser to John McDonnell, writes, that this should serve as a “kick up the arse” for the left in Britain.2

However, while we should recognise and celebrate Polanski’s strengths, as well as the change in direction of the Greens signalled by his leadership, we cannot neglect the real limitations of his party. This is especially important given that many prominent figures on the left, including Meadway, have recently joined the Greens, in his case championing a future Red-Green alliance.3

For revolutionary socialists, without illusions in parliamentary reform as the means of fundamentally transforming society, elections or elected office can nonetheless be used to propagandise for socialism or to raise the level of class consciousness and struggle in society. Although Polanski is a breath of fresh air, the Greens consistent collapse into electoralism, emphasising elections at the cost of struggle from below, and their limited base in the working class, cast serious doubt over their ability to fulfil such a role. This article aims to offer an analysis of the Green Party in this light and to challenge the notion that it can be a credible socialist alternative to Labourism.

A brief history of the Greens

Britain’s Green Party, like most of its equivalents in western Europe, emerged against the backdrop of the environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s.4 It was initially established as PEOPLE in 1973, changing its name to the Ecology Party in 1975 and, finally, to the Green Party in 1985.5 The organisation’s founding philosophy, as reflected in the document The Manifesto for Survival, typified much of the environmental movement at the time. It catastrophised growth and was marred by neo-Malthusian influences, viewing population increases, industrialism and urbanisation responsible for environmental breakdown, rather than capitalism.6

It was not until the 1979 general election that the party was dragged out of obscurity by three leading figures: Jonathan Tyler, an academic who became chair in 1976; the author Jonathon Porritt, who chaired the party in 1979; and David Fleming, its economics spokesperson and press secretary.7 Despite standing 53 candidates, and averaging a mere 1.5 percent of the vote where they stood, the election raised the profile of the party and saw a significant rise in membership.8 Following only modest advances at subsequent general elections in the 1980s, however, it was elections for the European Parliament that gave a glimpse of what was possible. In the 1989 European elections, the Greens won 2.3 million votes and saw their membership more than double.9 Further breakthroughs in domestic politics had to wait until the Labour Party under Tony Blair replaced the Conservatives in office in 1997. In the 2000s, the Greens were able to make real gains, pursuing a localised election strategy, aptly named “Westminster through townhalls”, through which they significantly increased their number of council seats. This helped build up a support base, laying the foundations that would allow them to win seats at Westminster in specific constituencies—the first being Brighton Pavillion in 2010, where Caroline Lucas, then party leader and already a Member of the European Parliament, was elected.

The party saw significant membership growth in 2014 and 2015. Under the leadership of Natalie Bennett, they were able to seize the opportunity to position themselves to the left of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party. The 2015 Green manifesto made the case for redistributionist, anti-austerity “tax and spend” economic policies.10 Their positioning on the left worked: the party doubled in size, benefiting from the growing disillusionment with the Labour Party. This culminated in a growth to 60,000 members in 2015, the year of a general election in which the party would take 3.8 percent of the vote, as well as retaining its parliamentary seat in Brighton.11

The emergence of Corbyn, who, in 2015, went from ostracised left-wing Labour backbencher to the party’s leader, subdued the growth of the Greens. The party, then led by Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley, dampened its economic messaging of 2015. Recognising the more limited space on the left, they formed part of the opposition to—and even helped the collusion against—Corbynism. A 2016 campaign advert, in which Corbyn and the Tory politicians David Cameron and Boris Johnson are depicted as squabbling children, is characteristic of the Greens’ approach in these years: attacking both Labour and the Conservatives.12 Not only did prominent Green Party figures echo the smears of antisemitism directed towards Corbyn’s Labour, they also exploited Brexit as a means to undermine his party leadership. A letter by Lucas in the Guardian calling for a cross-party all-female coalition to stop a no-deal Brexit, also signed by the likes of Labour’s Yvette Cooper, the Conservative Anna Soubry and Jo Swinson, a Liberal Democrat, is a key example of this.13 Polanski himself would join the attacks on Corbyn, posting on Twitter in 2018 that, because he was a “pro-European Jew”, there were “two reasons why he couldn’t vote for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn”.14 The Green Party under Polanski now appears more amicably aligned with Corbynism, and he has flirted with the idea of pacts and alliances with a potential Your Party and other socialist independents, even if he has played down the prospect since his election to the leadership. However, many will recall the cover leading Green figures gave to the establishment’s right-wing attacks on Corbyn, as well as the fact that they stood against him in the 2024 general election, when he put himself forward, successfully, as an independent left candidate in Islington North.

Looking at the Greens over the recent period of the past 10 years is important as it epitomises how the Green Party has routinely oscillated from left to right in its fight for electoral relevance against Labour. This is symptomatic of the Green Party’s electoral opportunism, in which political consistency and integrity is subordinated to winning seats. Clearly, there is much to commend about the Greens’ most recent manifesto, which mentions a 10:1 maximum pay ratio between bosses and their employees; a four-day working week; a wealth tax; and bringing key industries back into public ownership.15 Polanski has made clear he intends to go further. Nonetheless, it also has to be recognised that, because the Greens have always been a fairly peripheral electoral project when it comes to Westminster elections­—never facing the prospect of being in control of the government, holding ministerial positions or of becoming the official opposition­—they possess a great deal of latitude and flexibility when it comes to national policy.

Whose party?

In a revealing set of interviews, researcher Mitya Pearson examined the characteristics of 50 of the original members of Ecology/the Green Party.16 Some 80 percent of respondents were either university graduates or undertaking a degree at the time, and most were employed in the professional and service sector.17 As Cotgrove and Duff observed in 1980:

In short…environmentalists are drawn predominantly from a specific fraction of the middle class whose interests and values diverge markedly from other groups in industrial societies. Firstly, environmentalism is an expression of the interests of those whose class position in the non-productive sector locates them at the periphery of the institutions and processes of industrial capitalist society.18

For Marxists, “working class” is a broader term than the categories used in academic sociology, encompassing many white-collar professions. Yet, there was indubitably a sharp socio-political divide between sections of the environmental movement and industrial workers in the 1970s and 1980s, with the former often viewing the latter in negative terms. There was “a general concern among some middle-class people about…issues…such as unions, the economy, social discord and a general pessimism about the state of the country, intertwined with the declinism…”.19 Scepticism towards—and at times outright opposition to—industrial struggle and trade unions shaped participants in Green Party politics. As one of those interviewed by Pearson put it:

Did we think of the party as left-wing?… We weren’t thinking in left-right terms. We were not impressed with [sic], in those days probably perhaps more so than today, you get all these militant lefty types who used to get involved in big debates… It just seemed like resources should be shared evenly. I don’t think that was a left-wing thing, it just seemed like common sense.20

Clearly, the Green Party today is different. Now, much of the party proudly embraces the “left-wing” badge, with some candidates, including Polanski, labelling themselves as socialists and attempting to build links with the unions. Yet, the party’s relationship to the working class cannot simply be transformed at will. Today, large portions of its support base derive from socially progressive university towns such as Bristol or Brighton. This is reflected in its vote at the 2024 general election: it won 19 percent of the student vote, yet only 6.7 percent of the total vote share.21 Although the Greens may be winning the support of downwardly mobile graduates, they are not capturing the votes of the mass of working-class people more generally, performing markedly worse among households of a lower socio-economic grade.22 The 2014 study, which sought to establish the average Green voter, remains relevant: “she is likely to be a graduate and a Guardian reader”.23 Even the Greens’ newly elected deputy leader, Mothin Ali, recently admitted: “for too long the Green party has been very southern-facing, very middle class-facing—or from the outside, when you look at it, it looks quite middle class”.24 The public is very much in agreement: in a recent YouGov poll, 40 percent of people said the Green Party appeals more to the middle class, in comparison to only 7 percent who thought it appealed more to the working class.25 To proclaim yourself a socialist is one thing, to get widespread backing from workers is another.

Party and class

The Labour Party, unlike the Greens, emerged out of the trade union movement, and while it has scarcely actualised them, it has historically appeared as a conduit for working-class aspirations. As Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein point out, following Lenin’s definition, Labour is a “capitalist workers’ party”.26 This distinction is important, because while Labour lines up with and seeks to run the capitalist state, it has benefited from mass support from workers, hingeing on the notion that it can deliver reforms through national government. If the trade union bureaucracy mediates between workers and employers, the Labour Party, which emerged as the “political expression of the bureaucracy, aiming to influence parliament”, is another mediating element—but one even further removed from the class struggle.

This is why voting Labour has historically often been seen as an index of a basic class sentiment, in a way that voting for the Greens has not. There is, of course, deep resentment among workers towards the Labour Party under Keir Starmer, yet this does not negate the institutional links the party has to the union movement, typically through the channel of the union bureaucracy.27 Indeed, part of the sense of betrayal stems from the perception that Labour ought to support workers, even if the practice has historically tended to be quite different.28 Whatever form Your Party eventually takes, if it takes any at all, it is primarily centred on a left split from Labour and therefore has its roots in this tradition. It will largely accept the logic of capitalism. The trade unions, however, remain underpinned by the collective will of workers to push back against their own exploitation within that system.

Although Polanski seeks to forge greater links with the working class and expand pre-existing trade union working groups, the notion of class struggle in the Green Party appears as simply one amid a kaleidoscope of different social movements. It occupies no special role for the Greens. The party was not conceived out of this basic class antagonism in society but was created as a distinctly environmentalist party, which initially aspired to transcend the left-right dichotomy. This lack of orientation on class struggle, having little stake in the self-activity of workers, limits the radicalism of the Greens, and will do so even under the leadership of Polanski.

Tories on bikes?

“Tories on bikes” may be considered an outdated and unwarranted slur aimed at the Greens, particularly at the dawn of Polanski’s leadership. Yet, the stereotype of Green Party activists as nature-lovers devoid of any real class politics is not completely unfounded. At the least, Green politicians have tended to prioritise electoral calculus and pragmatic realism in office over class struggle.

Routinely, when they have held power within local councils, Green politicians have shown as much willingness as Labour councillors to implement cuts and austerity. One of the clearest examples was during the Brighton bin strike of 2013. The Green-controlled council, led by Jason Kitkat, refused to meet the demands of the GMB union, which organised the refuse workers, threatened legal action to force a return to work and, at one point, authorised private contractors to undertake rubbish clearances, endorsing scabbing in an effort to undermine the strike. More than this, the local council organised community clear-ups—in essence, litter-picking against workers.29

There are also instances in which the Greens have formed coalitions with the Tories to run local councils. A famous example occurred on Leeds council in 2004, where the coalition included both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and where the Greens collaborated in cutting funding for libraries and other social provision, including hostels for homeless people.30 Similarly, in Oxfordshire in 2016, Green councillors voted with the Tories to pass a budget proposing £50 million in cuts. Some 20 libraries were threatened with closure, children’s centres were shut and adult social care provision was cut. In other instances, Greens have voted with Labour to push through cuts. For instance, in Bristol, from 2014 to 2015, they voted to support Labour’s £90 million austerity package, which again included cuts to adult social care and library closures. On Sheffield City Council, from 2020 to 2023, the Greens approved budget cuts as part of a coalition with Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

In the absence of a clear class politics or an ideological commitment to struggle from below, the Greens have assumed the position of bystander to—or enforcer of—local cuts. This is symptomatic of the Greens’ infatuation with electoralism as the primary means of enacting change. As Chris Rose, the Greens’ national election agent at the time of the coalition with the Tories in Leeds, put it: “None of the mainstream parties are worth anything… It doesn’t really matter which one we work with, just what the outcome is. We can’t stay on the sidelines forever”.31 It should be the duty of socialists to refuse to implement cuts on principle, and at the very least, refuse to form any coalition with ardently pro-capitalist parties such as the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats in local government. The prioritisation of emerging from the electoral sidelines to clutch at power typifies the Greens and, however radical Polanski appears, without a fundamental break with the whole strategic logic of the party, this approach will continue to cast a shadow over the party’s efforts to promote “ecosocialism”.

Lessons from abroad

England has not yet seen the Greens play a role in national government. However, experiences of Green parties elsewhere suggest how the pursuit of elected office at the expense of principle might play out at a national level. In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, the Irish Greens, in coalition government with Fianna Fáil, one of the two mainstream parties that have dominated Irish politics since 1922, helped implement draconian budget cuts. They failed to vote against public sector wage cuts, welfare reductions and higher college fees. Not only this, but they actively propped up a government that had created the conditions for the “Celtic Tiger” economy, founded on a property bubble and reckless financial exuberance, paving the way for the catastrophic Irish crash that followed.32 The Greens would deservedly lose all six of their seats in the 2011 general election.

The German Greens offer an even more extreme illustration of this pattern. To a greater extent than their British equivalents, the German Greens were born out of the New Social Movements of the 1970s, shaped by the environmental, anti-nuclear and peace movements. Throughout the 1980s, the Greens were explicitly anti-NATO, calling for its dissolution, and they pushed for the immediate shut-down of nuclear power. The Greens maintained that “an ecologically conscious foreign policy is based on nonviolence”.33 Yet, once they joined a Red-Green coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) in 1998, the Greens muted their radicalism, abandoning their key campaign pledges. Not only did they capitulate to a “phase out” of nuclear power, rather than its immediate decommissioning, the Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer also gave his blessing to NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo.34 After betraying his supposed anti-militarist principles, he then accused his detractors of being idealistic cowards.35 Such shifts are symptomatic of a liberal reformism, oriented on electoral success and holding office. Within such a perspective, you can be bold and principled in opposition, yet when you enter government, acting ethically is dismissed as infantile irresponsibility.

Holding office in a capitalist society requires that parties prove their responsibility to the wider ruling class—managing the capitalist economy and defending the imperialist interests of the state. So, the German Greens would go on to support participation in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan during the US-led “War on Terror” that began in 2001, dressing this up in the guise of peacekeeping, reconstruction and stabilisation. Fischer expressed the principles behind this most starkly: “There is no Green foreign policy, just a German one”.36 Today, the German Greens wholly and unashamedly endorse NATO. As part of the “traffic light” coalition, from 2021 to 2024, including the SPD and also the liberal Free Democratic Party (whose party colours gave the traffic light its yellow), they advocated increased arms sales to Ukraine as it became a NATO proxy in the clash with Russian imperialism.37 They also became advocates of NATO enlargement and pushed for the fast-tracking of Ukraine’s membership. Throughout this period, Annalena Baerbock of the Greens served as the government’s foreign minister.

In the context of genocide in Gaza, the German Greens have retained a staunch pro-Israel position. Not only has the party leadership actively endorsed the shipments of German military hardware to Israel, including advanced missile defence systems, they also supported the German state’s crackdown on the Palestine movement. Unsurprisingly, with the collapse of the coalition, the Greens were punished by voters—losing a million votes, with the entire leadership of the Green Youth quitting the party altogether.38

Of course, the Green Party of England and Wales is a separate and distinct organisation; yet, both organisations emerge from similar traditions, and they remain linked together in the European Greens. This organisation too has stressed “Israel’s right to defend itself” and advocated increased defence spending.39 There is some heterogeneity between different Green Parties globally, with the Scottish Greens, for instance, opposing NATO membership. However, as they become a more credible electoral force, the Green Party in England and Wales has likewise flirted with imperialism. In 2023, it abandoned its long-held policy of supporting withdrawal from NATO, stressing the important role it supposedly plays in preserving Europe’s stability.40

It is positive that Polanski has signalled that he would seek to withdraw from NATO, potentially reversing current Green Party policy.41 However, considering how the Greens have behaved abroad, there is little reason to think the same patterns would not reassert themselves were the Greens to approach power in a British context. Indeed, when challenged by then Labour chair Ellie Reeves in the wake of his victory, Polanski was quick to emphasise that he did not advocate immediate withdrawal from NATO and would only support such a move if a European defence alliance could be established, a far less radical position.42

The left-right split

Even with Polanski’s decisive election victory, the received wisdom is that the Green Party of England and Wales currently faces an “identity crisis”. This was reflected in the 2025 leadership election itself, which pitched Polanski against the moderate candidates running to become co-leaders, Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay. Polanski identifies as an “ecosocialist”, but Chowns and Ramsay reflect the need to placate a more conservative, rural electorate, while still retaining the party’s more radical urban green voters. The resulting political equivocation was clear in Ramsay and Chowns’ response to the recent UK Supreme Court Ruling on gender. Ramsay failed to give an answer as to whether he thinks trans women are in fact women; Chowns, on stage at a Green Party event, praised the “clarification” the ruling provided and welcomed “open conversation” on the topic.43

Similarly, at the most recent general election, Carla Denyer presented herself as the pro-Palestine, left candidate in Bristol, while Ellie Chowns made no mention of Gaza and ostensibly campaigned on a welfare and warfare ticket. Where the national party’s policy is progressive, there is no guarantee this filters down to the ground. Election material put out by candidates is often hyper-localised, depoliticised and, at times, utterly superficial: “Stephen is keen to tackle pot-holes, clamp down on inconsiderate parking and reduce traffic speeds”; “Olga has been checking grit-bins, reporting issues with streetlights, potholes, pavements and drains, bollards, litter, bins, dog-fouling and vandalism”.44 This approach is symptomatic of a party that has electoralism woven into its DNA, in which seat-winning is prioritised over any meaningful, principled politics.

Polanski will likely struggle to change this deep-rooted culture in the party. This is both because he, too, would rely on support from less progressive voters in rural areas and because of the Greens’ organisational structures. Indeed, within recent campaign leaflets, lots of Green councillors boast of the party’s decentralised structure: “Free to speak up—independent green voice for our area”; “Greens aren’t told what to do by their Party. Fiona will always put you first and politics second”; “Unlike other parties, the Green Party doesn’t tell their councillors how to vote”; “Green councillors prioritise local issues—clean air, sustainable transport, green spaces—over rigid party lines”; “Their decisions resonate with the people they represent, not distant party elites”.45

This autonomy of local candidates means they can quite easily sail into reactionary waters. After the local elections on 1 May 2025, in which Reform UK won 39 councillors in North Northamptonshire, the local Greens responded: “We’ve always said we would work with anyone to get things done for the good of the community. Once you’re elected as a councillor you need to put the politics aside… Obviously, we’re not really aligned with Reform on a national level, but that isn’t relevant locally”.46

There are many fine anti-racist activists within the Green Party. Many will recall Mothin Ali’s bravery amid the riots in summer 2024 in Leeds, leading to him being dubbed the “hero of Harehills”.47 A year later, amid a summer marked by a more protracted campaign of far-right demonstrations, Polanski released a short video. He chastises Labour’s obsession with “the boats, the boats, the boats”. He adds: “the problem this whole time was the super-rich and their yachts”.48 This is a powerful and commendable message. However, there is as yet little sign of the Green Party urging its whole membership to come out to confront the fascists on the streets. There remains a structural deficit that fails to bind local candidates to a robust anti-racism for fear of losing votes.

Of course, there will also be pressure within Your Party to become a majoritarian or populist party, aiming to win over the votes of socially conservative voters. Forces within it will argue the new party should refrain from taking a principled position on trans rights or adopt a robust anti-racist migration policy. Yet, the fact that this is in its embryonic stages means that the terrain is far more open for socialists to insert these arguments locally.

A megaphone for the movements?

In a discussion with a Socialist Worker journalist at the Marxism festival in London this summer, Michael Lavalette, an independent left-wing councillor on Lancashire County Council, argued:

The pull when you get elected to be part of the political establishment is huge. It’s a pull to be part of the Westminster establishment, but you see that even at council level. We have to be clear that this is absolutely secondary to what elected representatives should do. They should be a megaphone for the communities they represent. They should be there to uplift and deepen the movement of resistance on the streets, the trade union movement and the needs of abandoned communities.49

The relationship between socialists and elections is defined by tension. Although elections can express resistance, the paradigm of electoralism works to subordinate social struggle to the ballot box. Rather than act as a dampener on sparks of struggle, elections should stoke the flames of resistance. As Lenin writes: “[T]he action of the masses—a big strike, for instance—is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation”.50

However, as we have seen, this subordination of electoralism to class struggle is quite alien to the logic of the Green Party, which conceives of elections to win office as the prime means of transforming society. Socialists, by contrast, whether elected to local councils or to parliament, should refuse to implement austerity as a matter of principle, using their position to build struggles on the ground to defend such positions. The failure of even quite radical left-reformist projects to withstand pressure from the right and institutions representing the interests of capital as they approach or assume governmental office has been seen across Europe, from Podemos in the Spanish State to Syriza in Greece.51 It should be recalled that these were parties propelled forwards by mass struggle, each of which at least claimed to give parliamentary expression to the aspirations of these movements. It is highly unlikely that the Greens, devoid of any socialist tradition, not rooted in the working class or embedded in social movements, would do better, even under the leadership of a figure such as Polanski.

Many Green Party members may well be veteran activists, but the Green Party as an institution makes little effort to cohere militant forces on the ground to propel movements forward. Despite the Green Party’s relatively strong position on Gaza these days, the Party has little visible presence on national demonstrations for Palestine and tends to distance itself from the most radical elements of the movement on the streets. This is even more striking when considering the climate movement. As James Schneider argues:

[W]hat impact have [the Greens] had on public consciousness? Virtually none. Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for the Future have had a much more tangible effect on mass environmental politics. The Greens’ mathematical approach—the more elected representatives the better—is two hundred years old, dating to the time of the liberal revolutions, when public discourse took place in newly formed parliaments and assemblies in which the numbers really mattered. It is totally unsuited to the 2020s.52

The subordination of the movement to the Greens’ electoralism was also demonstrated in the most recent general election. In areas where left independents had by far the best chance of ousting Labour MPs, the Green Party refused to stand down. In the London constituency of Ilford North, Leanne Mohammed was 500 votes away from beating Labour’s pro-Israel Wes Streeting.53 Had the Greens stepped down, and encouraged their 1,500 voters to support Mohammed, it is likely she would have won, strengthening the sense that the election was a referendum on Labour’s response to the Gaza genocide and preventing Streeting from becoming health secretary in the new government.

Agents of change?

Lenin’s comments about the limitations of elections reflect his deep faith in the capacity for self-activity among workers. It was this that allowed him to envisage a route out of the impasse in which governing within a capitalist society, based around ruthless exploitation and competitive accumulation, acts as a constraint on those elected. In this view, workers have the collective power, through their own struggles, to force through reforms from below and, ultimately, to challenge capitalism altogether.

Such an approach is simply not part of the worldview of even quite radical Greens such as Polanski. As he put it in a recent interview:

When people try to separate us into the working class versus people who are running their small businesses, what they’re doing is dividing us. It is the same with rural versus urban; whether you live in the countryside or whether you live in the city, inequality hurts you, the farmers are being screwed over by the same oligarchy and billionaire class as someone who is calling for rent controls in Birmingham or London because their rent is too much. We need to recognise that we are the 99 percent and they are the 1 percent. I think 99 percent of people can unite under the Green Party umbrella, and I think that’s exactly how we’ll grow in the same way that Reform has… And I think it’s time for everyone to put the differences aside and get on with it, in the Green Party.54

Whatever its superficial attractions, this version of populism ignores the tensions between the interests of different groups, with different class positions within society. This is not dissimilar to the post-Marxist arguments that underpinned organisations such as Podemos in the past, which also rested on the notion of rallying “the people” against the “elite”. Is it really possible, as Polanski suggests, to appeal electorally to the rural petty bourgeois, the urban middle classes and the working class, without compromising socialist values? Or would this simply reproduce the contradictions of previous Green Party programmes and policies?

For Meadway, Polanski’s vision of “ecosocialism” is the antidote to Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Meadway argues that by appealing pragmatically to the tangible effects of climate change felt by the population, the Greens can win over voters across the political spectrum: “what use, right now, is a new windfarm for someone whose house has burned down or flooded? Or who, on a more mundane level, is finding the weekly shop increasingly costly?”55 Of course, climate adaptation and political framing are important, but if your strategy of social change—and of combatting racism in society—revolves around convincing a heterogenous electorate to vote for you, then you are left with a fairly parochial version of socialism.

What kind of climate politics?

There is, not surprisingly, a lot to commend about the environmental policies proposed by the Greens. In many ways, their 2024 manifesto defies the clichéd characterisation of the environmental movement as superficial, apolitical and detached from the lives of ordinary people. Rather, the Greens support popular policies such as nationalising the water companies, the railways and the big five retail energy companies, promising to reverse decades of neoliberalism, which has operated to prioritise shareholder returns over sustainable and universally accessible infrastructure. They also mention a carbon tax to make polluters pay, as well as a wealth tax on the billionaires to fund public services. Clear links are made between economic inequality and environmental degradation.

Yet, even in the area most associated with Green politics, climate change and broader ecological concerns, the lack of a politics rooted in the self-activity of the working class creates limitations. Working-class organisation is vital to “cancel recent fossil fuel licences such as for Rosebank and stop all new fossil fuel extraction projects in the UK; remove all oil and gas subsidies”.56 It would be naïve to think that such policies could simply be ushered in through parliament without considerable resistance. As authors such as Andreas Malm have stressed, fossil fuels are embedded in the very fabric of capitalism.57 Not only were fossil fuels first pursued in order to enable the increased exploitation of the working class, the insatiable drive for profits under capitalism has ensured the continued expansion of their use.

Building on the important contribution made by Brett Christophers in his 2024 book The Price is Wrong, Malm and Carton, in their 2024 work Overshoot, explain that, despite the low-cost and widespread availability of renewables, rapid decarbonisation is at odds with the logic of capitalism. They draw attention to the costs involved in the decommission of fossil fuel infrastructure and asset stranding: “If a company has finally, after five years of construction, opened the gates to a coal plant, the owner’s interest in the future is first of all retroactive: it is about recovering the advances of capital; or, allowing the piece to transfer its value to commodities, rather than seeing that value go to waste”.58 The tendency of fixed capital in hydrocarbon exploration to rise over time, in addition to the financial embroilment of banks in this process, makes a write-off ever more untenable. In their failure to recognise the irreconcilable contradictions between capitalism and nature, and the challenges this imposes on realising their vision, the Greens often fall short.

As Karl Marx argued, the transformation of society will be actualised by what he called the “associated producers”. It is only through workers’ power, and the collective and rational planning of production, that the “metabolic rift” induced by capitalism can be addressed. Marx asserts it is the task of workers to “govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature”. The objective position of the working class in relation to the production process gives them an immense amount of power; it will be they who form the “gravediggers” of capitalism and can put an end to subjugation of nature for the sake of profit.59

However, it is unlikely that such ideas will become central within the Green Party. The Green movement has always tended to present itself as one that could transcend the left-right dichotomy; it is not grounded in any robust theory of social change. Instead, it borrows from a range of liberal movements and political traditions, resulting in a miscellany of left and not so left politics, that ultimately see it as the task of elected MPs and councillors to implement reforms on behalf of people and the planet.

Today, we are posed with a choice between socialism or extinction, and the Greens’ vision of “putting capitalism under green management” is fraught with contradictions. Of course, these are contractions with which any left reformist project will also grapple. Yet, the Greens’ lack of a base in or orientation on the working class means it is difficult for them to be a lever of the kind of extra-parliamentary struggle required. Instead, their emphasis on electoralism means that their environmentalism is largely expressed at the level of policy, rather than practice.

At the time of writing, Corbyn and Sultana’s Your Party suffers from tensions in leadership. However, it has had more people sign up for further information than the entire membership of Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK combined. This demonstrates the thirst for a genuine left-wing alternative. After Polanski’s leadership bid was unveiled, the Green Party’s membership increased from 60,000 to 65,000 members. Since his election—and the tensions within Your Party—it is reported to have risen to 75,000. This is not to be sniffed at, and Polanski appears to be an improvement on his predecessors, yet the comparison does beg the question: if you are a socialist in Britain, why would you be a member of the Greens?

Ultimately, the Greens are a socially liberal electoral project with a broad commitment to environmentalism. Because “ecology” in a broad sense (as opposed to, say, specifically Marxist conceptions of ecology) is politically amorphous, the Greens are not anchored to any particular strategy of social transformation. This means they oscillate along the political spectrum, absorbing elements from a range of social movements, tending towards an under-theorised pragmatism. This allows them to opportunistically shapeshift according to the electoral climate. They can be formally to the left of Labour after Labour has lurched to the right. However, fundamentally, they are unreliable allies in struggle: they tend, to some degree, to reflect social struggles, rather than being organically linked to them or driving them forward.

Clearly, local pacts between the Greens and whatever left candidates stand in next year’s council elections will need to be made in specific areas, but a Red-Green popular front should not be the starting point. Rather, it is necessary to connect with the mood of those excited by Your Party and interested in exploring how a left alternative to Labour can emerge. For revolutionary socialists, it will be essential to emphasise that whatever initiatives we take, they must be rooted in struggle, and systematically prioritise that over the logic of electoralism, eschewing the creation of a Labour Party Mark II, even one with a Corbynista leadership. Although Polanski’s emergence is to be welcomed, and his vision may have considerable overlaps with ours, salvation does not lie in the Green Party or the tradition that it represents.

Katie Coles works in the national student office of the Socialist Workers Party.

Notes