Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
One of my favourite poems is Waiting for the Barbarians by CP Cavafy. It’s about a decaying civilisation that’s obsessed by an external threat that, in the end, never comes. I’ve sometimes wondered whether my own fixation with the Green Party (for instance, here, here, here and here) falls under the same category.
Well, I needn’t have worried. The barbarians have arrived. Let’s look at some recent polls. The latest from More in Common puts the Greens on 13 per cent, JL Partners on 14 per cent, Opinium 15 per cent, Ipsos 17 per cent, YouGov 18 per cent and Find Out Now 20 per cent. According to Election Maps UK the weighted average comes out at 16 per cent — that’s about three points behind both Labour and the Conservatives, and a similar margin ahead of the Lib Dems. (Reform remains clearly ahead on 26 per cent). Furthermore in the May elections, the Greens are expected gain hundreds of councillors — and to take control of local authorities like Hackney and Hastings.
So never mind the four-party politics we’ve only begun to get used to, we’ve now entered the age of five-party politics (or six in Scotland and Wales).
And yet if you were to view the situation through the lens of Conservative political strategy, you’d never know.
Kemi Badenoch does crack the occasional joke about Zack Polanski’s previous career as a hypnotist, but that’s about it.
If her party’s response to the rise of Reform was too little, too late — its reaction to the Green surge is practically non-existent. In my view, that’s a mistake, but a very understandable one. On the face of it Tory strategists have several reasons to look the other way while the Greens advance — or even to quietly cheer them on.
The most obvious point is that Polanski appears to be Labour’s problem, not ours. If the British Left wants to have a civil war, who are we to interfere? Napoleon’s advice to “never interrupt your enemy while he’s making a mistake” is surely applicable.
Even before Hannah Spencer’s stunning victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Green surge was already destabilising the Labour Party.
It wasn’t just the Mandelson scandal that precipitated the full of Morgan McSweeney, but the visible failure of his political strategy. You’ll remember that this time last year Labour was focused on winning back voters from Reform. But in doing so the governing party left its Leftward flank exposed.
And though Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana blew their own opportunity to take advantage, Zack Polanski — upon winning the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales — did not.
Labour is now paralysed, unsure which enemy to face first.
Gorton and Denton drove home the Green threat in the inner cities. However, there are many more Cabinet ministers set to lose their seats to Reform than to the Greens. Add to that the indications that Labour’s dominant “Soft Left” faction have decided that only Andy Burnham can credibly replace Starmer and see off Polanski. That may be true, but the Mayor of Greater Manchester has no immediate path back to Westminster, leaving his party in limbo.
Given these facts, why would Kemi Badenoch ride to Labour’s relief by launching a serious assault on the Greens?
Quite apart from anything else, the Tory leader is at her most effective in the House of Commons, where the Greens are a marginal presence and Labour — with its mortally wounded leader — the obvious target. At the current rate, Starmer may soon be gone, but if Burnham (or a Burnham substitute) repositions Labour to compete with the Greens, then that too would play into Badenoch’s hands — by opening up more space in the middle ground of British politics. She needn’t shift to the centre ideologically, just present herself as the adult in the room.
The Green advance is also helping to destabilise Reform UK.
That’s to a lesser extent than Labour, of course, but there is a discernible momentum-sapping effect. Reform had high hopes in Gorton and Denton — and in Matt Goodwin they selected a high profile candidate. But the Greens didn’t just split the anti-Reform vote, they overwhelmed it. They won’t be able to pull that trick off in most constituencies, but Hannah Spencer’s triumph has reinforced a nationwide dynamic in which the key question in every contest is: “who is best placed to stop Reform?” In some parts of the country, that could send tactical votes in our direction.
Farage is also weakened by the fact that he’s no longer the only populist leader on the block. Though Polanski is obviously coming from a very different place, he’s mining the same deep seam of anti-establishment sentiment. There are sections of the electorate who care less about distinctions of Left and Right than disrupting the status quo. At a time when the Greens are calling for wage caps on the rich, Reform are having to answer questions about their deputy leader’s tax affairs. For Farage, it’s an awkward contrast.
The Greens might also prove helpful in regard to the Conservative struggle against the Lib Dems. One reason why the yellows did so much damage at the last election is that they consolidated the Left-of-centre vote where it mattered. Labour’s unpopularity would suggest that this will continue — unless, that is, some Lib Dem voters go Green. After all, why choose Ed Davey’s lemonade-shandy radicalism, when you can get the hard stuff from Zack Polanski? So far, there’s not enough data to suggest how strong an effect that might be, but it’s one to watch.
So there you have it: several reasons why the Conservative leadership might choose to be intensely relaxed about the Green advance. Except that we’re not immune to the effects. The Greens have already snatched two Westminster constituencies from us and scores of council seats. As I’ve argued before on ConHome, Polanski’s shift to Left is an opportunity to regain this lost territory.
More than that, not taking action means that the rot could spread.
If the Left-of-centre vote collapses from Labour to the Greens and the Tory-Reform psychodrama continues to divide the Right, then we be losing more of our heartlands, not winning them back. Any Westminster seat with a concentration of Green councillors — for instance Tonbridge in Kent or the Mid Suffolk area should be regarded as vulnerable.
Even if the immediate losses are limited in scope — there’s the long-term to worry about. If you really want to have nightmares don’t just look at the overall level of Green support in the polls, look at how well they’re doing with younger voters. The problem isn’t only with the student-dominated 18-24 year old category, but all voters aged under 50 — among whom the Greens are now vying for first place. This is the future we’re staring in the face, so where’s the deeper thinking needed to prepare the British Right, indeed Britain itself, for survival?
Forget about finding hidden horrors in Green Party policy — this is not a movement that hides its radicalism. It’s all out there on stage, strutting its stuff for the world to see. Rather, the real intellectual challenge lies in seeking to understand its evident attraction to the voting public.
Thirty years ago, when the populist Right began to make its presence felt in British politics, the ruling establishment failed to take the likes of Nigel Farage seriously. There’s was even less interest shown in the growing numbers of people who backed the Referendum Party, then UKIP, then the Brexit Party and currently Reform UK. The Leave vote in 2016 was something of a wake-up call — but time-and-again the lessons have failed to stick.
Now, there’s every likelihood that Labour, the Conservatives and Reform are going to make the same fundamental error in regard to the rise of the Greens. They might tell us that Zack Polanski is “ridiculous” (thanks, Kemi, we know), but is it enough to say that the millions of voters fuelling his rise are ridiculous too?