How socialists consider developments in the Green Party in the UK, is a subject meriting some consideration at this time. The surge of enthusiasm for Your Party has seriously declined since 800,000 people expressed an interest in finding out more in the summer and autumn of 2025. Only around 55,000 have actually become members. Meanwhile membership of the Green Party has increased significantly, especially since the election of Zak Polanski as the Party’s leader in September 2025. Since his election the Green Party’s membership has risen from 80,000 to 190,000.
The membership of the other main political parties, apart from the Labour Party, has been relatively stable. The membership of the Labour Party is down by almost 60,000, and the timing of this decrease coincides almost exactly with the increase in support for the Green Party. It seems likely therefore that the Greens have gained the support of disaffected Labour Party members, but not in any significant sense members of other mainstream political parties.
It also seems probable that many of the additional members of the Greens come from those who might have been inclined to join Your Party, but have opted for the Green Party instead. Most of the current membership of Your Party joined several months ago. There was a hope within Your Party that once the initial conference was over, there would be a surge in membership but in fact there has hardly been any increase in membership since the conference in December 2025 and there is anecdotal evidence that some members are going over to the Greens from Your Party.
There is tremendous frustration around the inability of Your Party to send a message of unity to the hundreds of thousands of people who are watching its development. The conflict between what are widely perceived as rival camps within Your Party is disappointing to both those who are interested in Your Party and also to its activists. In the current elections for the Central Executive Committee, two slates are vying with one another for political and administrative control. “The Many” slate, headed up by Jeremy Corbyn, is challenged by the “Grassroots Left” slate fronted by Zarah Sultana. The Many slate clearly represents the established unelected leadership of Your Party, a leadership that has managed the development of what is one of the most significant political initiatives of the last hundred years with a well-documented incompetence and sectarianism. It is to her credit that Zarah Sultana openly broke with the Labour Party and called for a new worker’s party while Corbyn vacillated. She has been side-lined by the Corbyn team ever since. Sultana has therefore been propelled into working with left forces to present an alternative slate to challenge the institutionalised, anti-left forces that seized control of Your Party at its inception. As well as the two main slates there are also a whole raft of independents standing for the CEC.
At the time of writing, an initial period of endorsements for candidates has ended and the second and final round of endorsements began on 9th February. The first round revealed overwhelming support for the candidacies of Corbyn and Sultana to take two of the four elected officers’ positions. More broadly, the Grassroots Left slate candidates have polled slightly ahead of The Many slate candidates. If these trends are replicated in the second round of elections, then the Grassroots Left Slate and those sympathetic to its clear socialist programme will hold a majority on the CEC. In general, the Grassroots Left slate candidates are better known and have come via a process of consultation across many (but not all) left groups organised within Your Party.
Unfortunately, the process of nomination has been marred by the current leadership of Your Party preventing members of other political parties and groups from standing for the CEC. Most notably, Dave Nellist a member of the Socialist Party and Chair of the Trades Unionists and Socialist Coalition was banned from standing. This is a clear breach of the spirit of the motion passed at conference to allow dual membership, pending ratification by the CEC. As no CEC has been elected it is totally undemocratic for the current administrators of Your Party to ban Dave Nellist. This follows a pattern of prohibitions begun at Conference. If a left CEC is elected it is to be hoped that the effective ban on dual membership will come to an end.
While these and other difficulties are continuing, The Green Party benefits. Many are persuaded that The Greens offer a real alternative to the current neo-liberal status quo. There are progressive elements to their platform, on issues such as climate justice and social justice. However, they do not have a programme which challenges the ruling elite and capitalism.
In his address to last year’s Green Party conference Polanski talked a lot about inclusion and rights but said almost nothing about economics. He has made a call to take South East Water into public ownership, but this is not a demand for wide-spread nationalisation. The Greens have talked about increasing taxes on the super-rich and corporations by increasing Corporation Tax to the average level of the G7. They also propose a wealth tax on those with assets over £10 million of 1% and 2% on those with assets over £1 billion. These are both very modest proposals. Polanski states that he would look for an alternative alliance to NATO, which is a move away from the current pro-NATO position of the Greens but he supports using British troops in Ukraine as a peace-keeping force. The UK has backed Ukraine throughout the war and could not be considered neutral. The disturbing and murderous record of British troops attempting to “keep the peace” in Afghanistan and elsewhere should serve to underline this.
Of most concern is the fact that Polanski would support the continuation of austerity budgets being set by Green councillors in the apparently naïve assumption that they have no alternative. The Green Party in office has a really poor record on fighting austerity and has shown itself time and time again unable to face up to finance officers and the ruling class. Polanski should do what Jeremy Corbyn failed to do and call for a clear commitment to no-cuts budgets and beyond that the restoration of services previously cut as well as taking services back in-house.
The Gorton and Denton parliamentary by election, which takes place on the 26th February, has thrown up the situation where Your Party is being forced to take a position in relation to the Greens. It has been agreed that Your Party will not be contesting the seat and neither will the Trades Unionist and Socialist Coalition or The Worker’s Party of Britain. The view of most Your Party activists is that Your Party should give critical support to the Green Party candidate.
The Green Party has chosen an interesting candidate: Hannah Spencer, a plumber and apprentice plasterer. If elected, she would come from a group of workers (small employers and self-employed) under-represented by the main political parties at 8% but significantly over-represented by Reform UK at 39%. The tactic of The Greens in Gorton and Denton appears to be to make The Green Party appear as a party of ordinary working people, rather than the professional classes. There is no sense that currently the Green Party could be seen as a party of the working class. Is this the start of a trend in that direction?
There is concern that Reform UK will win this seat and that this could trigger an increase in support for Reform. However, according to recent polls, Reform’s popularity with voters has decreased slightly to 28% presently from a high of 30% in June 2025. This still would make it the largest party if a general election were called tomorrow, but it also appears that as a party it may have reached a plateau of support.
The Green Party will hold a policy conference in the spring but the date is yet to be confirmed. It proclaims on its website that policy is determined by the members. If the majority of those now joining stand on the left of British politics, which seems likely, then maybe the Green Party will evolve a socialist dimension or a significant socialist block. At present socialist ideas are very much in the margins and not clearly expressed by the Green Party. It will be worth those on the left monitoring the Greens and their shifts in policy in order to ascertain their true direction of travel. Zak Polanski certainly has a persuasive rhetorical style and many on the left would wish that some of our spokespersons could match it. It is deeds, not words however that will be the measure of the Greens future. In the past, they compromised with the elite, forming alliances with the Lib Dems and opposing workers struggling for decent pay. Will Polanski lead them to the left and socialism? The fact that the Greens have opted for a charismatic leader, in the mould of a young Corbyn indicates a tendency to follow Polanski’s lead, rather than the views of the majority of the Party. This is a departure from ideas of a more collective form of leadership which had been a feature of the Greens in the past.
In relation to the Gorton and Denton by election, socialists should recommend that their members give critical support to the Green Party in order to keep Reform from winning the seat and later formulate a set of demands to put to Greens standing in the local elections in May. These would include: restoring services, ending out-sourcing, building local authority houses, introducing rent-tribunals, and other measures.
Zarah Sultana is recommending that Your Party members give critical support to the Green candidate in order to slow the electoral momentum of Reform UK. It would be a vote against the far right and for a more progressive party than any of the other parties standing. Comrades on the left should unite. It remains to be seen the real character of the Green Party politically, but Your Party would be mistaken in confronting the Greens when Your Party is yet to have a clear structure and leadership team themselves. The fight against the far-right is at an important juncture in the UK. Building Your Party is a key part of this fight but undermining the only realistic alternative to the far-right in the Gorton and Denton by election would be a serious error.
The difficulty Your Party supporters face however is that in the up-coming local elections in May and more pressingly the Gorton and Denton by election an alternative to Labour and Reform UK must be in place. The Labour Party is faced with almost certain defeat in the by election and it seems that the Green Party is the only party able to challenge Reform UK at this stage. Your Party has yet to articulate a clear plan for the local elections in May but it seems highly unlikely that many (if any) Your Party candidates will be in place in time to stand. The results of the CEC elections are not announced until the 27th February and local election candidates have to be in place four weeks after that. With no guarantee of membership data being available by then and a serious falling away in momentum within the proto-branches the conditions are not conducive to putting up candidates. The best Your Party proto-branches can offer is to support strong independent socialist candidates, including TUSC candidates and where this is not possible, give critical and conditional support to Green Party candidates in order to cut across support for Reform and the far-right.
This conclusion is a sad inditement of the way Your Party has been mis-managed. Let’s hope that the CEC becomes led by socialists who will give a clear and democratic direction to Your Party – a CEC that will replace the current bureaucratic leadership with a team that will follow the democratic ambitions of the majority of Your Party members.
