Stick it to the Greens! We need a working-class party

How is it that Zack Polanski, a former hypnotist, ex-Liberal Democrat and ex-Zionist witch hunter is seen as the last great hope for a left alternative to Starmer’s Labour? It’s pretty obvious that Polanski would love nothing better than to see Your Party fail. His social media is filled with videos gleefully promoting the Greens as Your Party lurches from one disaster to another. And as frustrations mount with the destructive squabbles over organisational structures, there are droves of people in Your Party that have begun looking to Polanski. But sucking up to this quintessential London liberal only serves to drive away any potential working-class support.

The point of Your Party is not to be the Greens; they are hated by workers. And with good reason. In the name of protecting the environment, Green ideology has led to plant closures and job losses, as well as despised taxes (such as ULEZ) on working people who cannot afford new cars. In Brighton, when the city council was run by the Greens in 2021, they did their bit to break the bin strike. So much for “making work fair”!

Polanski has been doing the media rounds trashing Starmer, talking a tough game against Labour. But at the Green Party conference he left little doubt about what his real red line is. Polanski put stopping Farage above everything else because “that’s what’s at stake here”, leaving the door open to a coalition with Starmer. He was explicit about this on Novara Media, saying “I would still find it very difficult, by the way, to make Keir Starmer prime minister.” Difficult … but not impossible. A Starmer-Green coalition however would only strengthen Farage’s hand. Workers are turning to Farage and Reform because they are fed up with decades of austerity in the name of “anti-racism”, “inclusiveness” and “saving the planet”. To leave open the possibility of a Starmer-Green alliance means that Polanski in no way represents a break with the establishment.

A talking point often raised by Polanski is his promise to fight for a fairer Britain. But there’s no way this can happen as long as Britain remains loyal to the American empire and is a partner in its crimes around the world. He supports remaining in NATO, longs to rejoin the EU, and the Greens want tougher sanctions on Russia. Zack may not be thrilled with Trump as US commander-in-chief, but all his criticism notwithstanding, his aim is to maintain the imperialist alliance. Given that, any promises he makes to build a “fairer Britain” will be strictly limited to what is acceptable to the American and European warmongers.

If there’s one thing two-faced Zack is good at it’s knowing which way the wind blows and shifting his positions accordingly. Everyone seems to have forgotten that he once took part in hounding Corbyn from Labour over claims that the party was rife with anti-Semitism. Now the winds have changed and apparently so has Zack. Two years of a bloody and brutal one-sided war against the Palestinians by Israel and countless “Free Palestine” mass marches, Polanski knows it’s safe now to call it a genocide and to point out that opposing Israel does not equal anti-Semitism.

What this boils down to is that Polanski puts an eco-populist veneer on the same liberal claptrap workers have been served for years. What’s more outrageous is that the left knows Zack’s record and what the Greens stand for, yet they cannot bring themselves to take this fight to the Greens for fear of offending middle-class do-gooders in Your Party. If drawing a clear line against the Greens repels the liberals, all the better, let them join Polanski and his lot. A polarisation between socialists and liberals would actually be good for establishing a clear class line in Your Party and drawing in working-class support.

A good example of the kind of wishy-washy opposition to the Greens that turns out to be nothing of the sort is the Socialist Party. They say the Green Party “does not have a socialist ideology, a vision of an alternative system to capitalism”. Obvious enough, but that’s not something the Greens even claim to have. Yet for the purpose of elections, the SP thinks it’s “better surely that the Green Party is invited to affiliate to ‘Your Party’” in order to hold candidates “accountable” (socialistparty.org.uk, 10 September). What’s needed is to fight for a differentiation between socialists and the Greens, not to merge the two banners.

The point of building a new party in Britain is to provide a socialist alternative to Labour that can unite the working class and oppressed minorities in a struggle against their common enemy—the City of London and the British establishment—and change the political balance of forces. This means winning over the working class, who want nothing to do with Polanski. To do that, the task of socialists is to stop being so squeamish already and make a clear fight against the Greens.