Is the Green Party poised for a political breakthrough?

As the Green Party of England and Wales meets in Bournemouth for its autumn conference, some of its members are excited about the end of the two parties that have dominated politics for the past 100 years.

In this analysis, the Conservative Party is about to be replaced by Reform, while Labour, having won a wide but shallow victory last year, is already so unpopular that it will be eclipsed by a progressive alliance of Greens, Liberal Democrats and whatever emerges from the faction fight between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

The Green Party has just elected Zack Polanski, a member of the London Assembly, as its new leader, offering the prospect not of steady advance – the party won four MPs last year, up from one – but of a breakthrough into the big time.

When he was elected a month ago, he said his aim was to win “at least 30 MPs at the next election” and to “replace” Labour.

Polanski ousted the existing leadership team of Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns by claiming that he could learn lessons from the way Nigel Farage had disrupted “politics as usual” on the right. He offered an “eco-populism” that would take on Farage by copying some of his methods – mainly a supposedly plain-speaking savaging of the old parties.

He is right to see the disillusionment of many Labour voters with Keir Starmer’s government as an opportunity. Most analyses show that more people who voted Labour last year have defected to the Lib Dems, Greens and potentially to Your Party than to Reform.

The split between Corbyn and Sultana seems to open up the possibility of the Greens becoming the leading voice of the pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist tendency in British politics.

While Kemi Badenoch’s promise, expected to be formalised at the Conservative conference in Manchester next week, to repeal the 2008 Climate Act and the net zero target later attached to it, offers the prospect that some green Tories might come Polanski’s way – although if they are going to defect, the Lib Dems must remain the most likely destination.

At current levels of support, not very. In a five-party system, the Greens are still fifth, with about 10 per cent of the electorate saying they intend to vote for them. YouGov’s MRP poll, with its seat-by-seat model, suggests that the Greens might win seven seats if there were an election now, which is more “steady advance” than “exciting breakthrough”.

A detailed analysis of YouGov’s findings by the Political Betting website suggests that there are only another five seats where the Green vote share is within five percentage points of the forecast winner – either Labour or Reform. The analysis finds that the main electoral battleground on current polls is Labour versus Reform, with a secondary battleground of Tories versus Reform: “The dog that hasn’t barked to date is Labour versus Green. The Greens’ polling has increased, and they are getting a lot of solid second places but not yet getting close enough: for example, Lewisham North is Labour 41 per cent, Green 25 per cent.”

Polanski’s bet, and his members’ hope, is that Labour (and the Tories, and Your Party) continue to lose ground and that the combination of the climate emergency, the situation in Gaza and Labour’s pro-business policies will drive voters to the Greens.

Ed Miliband and Mothin Ali, possibly. The energy secretary has written for The Independent, condemning Kemi Badenoch’s ditching of net zero as an attempt to out-Farage Farage. He plainly intends to try to hang onto idealistic voters concerned about climate change, and, provided he doesn’t make gas and electricity bills even more expensive, Starmer may be inclined to let him.

Ali, one of two deputy leaders of the Green Party, may be more effective in stopping defectors coming the party’s way. Polanski had a difficult time on the BBC defending some of Ali’s past statements. Ali, a councillor in Leeds, wrote on the day of Hamas atrocities in October 2023 in a social media post: “White supremacist European settler colonialism must end!” He later deleted the post and said he was “sorry for any upset my comments caused”. Polanski said the “key” was that he apologised, and said that there was a “context” to his deputy’s comments.

It seems possible, to put it no higher, that Polanski’s focus on the Palestinian issue might narrow rather than broaden the appeal of a party that used to exist to protect the environment.