Zack Polanski: Some Initial Concerns

I appreciate I'm somewhat late to the party (no pun intended) on this one, but I wanted some time to gather my thoughts and see exactly what direction the Green Party was going to take before writing a full opinion piece on this.

First, for context; the Green Party has a elected a new leader, Zack Polanski, who has decisively broken with the two leader model that the Green Party has been running since it's 2016 leadership election. That alone is significant, but even moreso is his radical break from the parties old platform of gradually winning seats, instead advocating what he personally describes as "Eco-Populsim" which in his leadership campaign video he sells as an attempt to switch the political narrative away from blaming the decline of Britain's economy and public services on immigration and towards the billionaires who stoke these divisions to distract from and protect their own accumulating wealth. It goes without saying that guaranteeing equality of opportunity and reducing wealth gaps so that a small minority of individuals is prevented from holding too much power is hard, and how it is approached is going to be key in winning my support. So then, how does Polanski stack up?

As of now, he's advocated for leaving NATO and cutting defence spending at a time when Russia is more aggressive than ever. He believes NATO unsustainable due to the percieved unreliability of the current US President Donald Trump, and that we should seek alternate arrangements in Europe. While I do get the sentiment, I think we need to be pragmatic; besides the fact this has never gone down well with the electorate, this would leave us in much the same situation as Brexit, where we leave a mainstream political grouping, heightening our reputation abroad as an uncooperative loner State and leaving us with a worse off - and perhaps less safe - deal among the exact same grouping. To give a comparison to a more right-wing policy, this would produce a similar effect to us leaving the ECHR.

Another flagship policy of Polanski's is a wealth tax, which would supposedly pay for most of his plans to expand public infrastructure and welfare as according to him it would raise about £24 billion. In this interview he specifically calls out those who oppose a wealth tax as being somewhat reactionary, citing the Patriotic Millionaires as an example of those willing, saying those who don't should be, as he puts it, "happily [waved] out the door." This would be a disaster, as wealth taxes have gone notoriously badly in other countries that have attempted them, one such being Norway, where increasing it caused an exodus of around 50 millionaires and a loss of about £438 million in tax revenue, completely ruining any projected gain. To add to this, even Australia, which has one of the lowest wealth divides in the world, does not have a federal wealth tax because of this exact issue.

While Polanski had intially impressed me with his commitment to minority rights, he has also expressed interest in forming an electoral pact with Your Party, Corbyn's new political venture. I am very skeptical about this as most members of this party are conservative, despite some vague and contradictary promises on their website. ("you will decide the party’s direction" but, also, "We will only fix the crises ... with a mass redistribution of wealth and power.") To give some examples, three of their five members voted against fully decriminalising abortion, all five voting against giving the choice of assisted dying to people, and their technical leader in Parliament Shockat Adam was Chair of a group that gave advice to Muslim parents on how to lobby against schools teaching LGBTQ+ content. This should be worrying to anyone who values their freedom as well as tolerance of different beliefs, and due to Polanski's dropping of the co-leadership model, it makes me question how much he truly cares about the voices he claims to represent.

Many of my left-leaning friends will naturally question if these critiques come from a genuine place or are just part of a centrist aversion to change, to that I answer with this; what's most ironic about this situation is the Green Party tried a large number of these policies once before in 2017 and it cost them 2% of their already small electorate. This led to their pivot to replacing a good chunk of taxes with a Land Value Tax in 2019, which would encourage the already wealthy to invest into their land to offset the costs of the tax, bringing a whole bunch of benefits. I also had some skepticism about this Manifesto too, particularly in regards to it's aversion to nuclear energy, which is actually cleaner than most other renewables. However, they were very clear on how much they would invest, promising far less than other parties in many sectors, as well as being honest about how much borrowing they would need for these investments, something few parties fo now, even better being most of these investments looked like they would actually end up paying back more in the long term. This would be the Manifesto I'd back in 2019, so it's a shame the Greens have already moved so far and away from this equally as radical, but ultimately more realistic prospect.

I fear those in Waveny Valley, the first constituency in East Anglia to ever back the Greens, will have a harder time accepting such explicitly stated left-wing policies, having flipped in 2024 from a redistribution of Conservative stronghold Seats. Perhaps I will be proven wrong, and there is still time for him to convince me too. As of yet though, I remain skeptical; populism does not necessarily equate to popularity.