The party must aspire to be more than a Labour pressure group. It should offer a vision for radical reform – and ways to implement it
It’s a strange time to be a Green. We have just held our largest conference ever, but it was overshadowed by a controversial motion that was attacked by the media as racist. Then, when we lost a byelection in a Camden seat that is so Labour it has estates named after Blair-era ministers, the headlines called for Zack Polanski to resign.
It does, however, mark the end of phase one for Polanski’s Greens. Polanski burst on to the political scene in 2025 and ate up attention, enjoying an easy monopoly on hope while Labour was sucked into the black hole of Starmerism. Labour has since escaped, with Andy Burnham giving social democracy with Mancunian characteristics a half-hearted go. But Burnham’s honeymoon already seems to be ending. John Healey’s budget of “difficult decisions” and “fiscal responsibility” is likely to disappoint everyone but the financial markets, and a winter energy bill crisis driven by a possible El Niño deep freeze is just one of many problems he’ll soon have to face.
Joe Todd is a senior fellow at the Autonomy Institute and co-host of the Life of the Party podcast