Zack Polanski is in deep trouble. Once a rising star on the left of British politics, his leadership of the Greens is on course to implode if he doesn’t do two things fast: first, learn to make better political decisions; and second, stand up to querulous party members determined to prove a point rather than help the party build a cross-section of support.
Polanski’s latest set of problems began at the party conference where the Greens’ cherished grassroots democracy allowed a motion to pass so laden with self-indulgence that it’s a miracle it didn’t need a fork-lift truck to table it. The motion in question was “Zionism is racism”. Let me be clear: I am not for one moment minimising the decades of discrimination and crimes perpetrated by the state of Israel against Palestinians, including genocide. But what is also true is that, given relentless press criticism of how the Greens have handled antisemitism in the party following the arrest of two councillors in April on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred, the timing and impact of this particular political stink-bomb could not have been worse.
It certainly cleared the room of, broadly, two types of people: anyone who’d like to see the Greens become a party of mass appeal and some – though not all – Jewish members.
With their actions, the motion’s authors threw Polanski to a rightwing press hell-bent on trying to suggest that he – one of only a handful of Jews ever to lead a British political party – was harbouring Soviet-style antisemites.
On top of that, in my opinion, the wording was flawed. For a start, it attempts to “define Zionism”, a rather tall order given that international experts have been fighting over the nature of the ideology since 1885. For a small group of people to think they can offer a definitive understanding in two sentences is a sign of hubris.
This will hopefully serve as a warning to members who think a pyrrhic victory is better than an actual victory at the ballot box
To prove the point, when the chair of Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, was asked about her own beliefs in a BBC interview, she said she defined herself as “both Zionist and anti-Zionist” depending on the definition, before adding it was “quite possible” she would leave the Greens after her group was excluded from feeding into the draft motion. It’s worth noting that Jewish Greens had previously issued a statement in which they said: “Our members are very divided over this motion, and as a result we do not have an official position on it.” More proof, if needed, that this particular fight was one that was always more likely to divide than to unite.
Then there’s the implicit idea that the two-state solution is not acceptable – because the motion “supports the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine.” The problem here is that this appears to directly contradict the position of the head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, who has previously indicated that the two-state solution is still the desired outcome of any potential peace process. Are the authors of the motion really in disagreement with the leading Palestinian diplomat in the UK?
Finally, there’s been much debate over whether or not the motion was antisemitic. I’m not Jewish, so I venture here with caution: I haven’t identified anything inherently Jew-hating in the wording of the motion itself. However, there has been deep concern that its adoption might lead to anti-Jewish disciplinary practices – if, for example, a Green party member attended a Zionism-supporting synagogue (the party has said it would never allow any Jewish member to be persecuted for doing so). That still leaves the issue of members (of any faith) who work with a pro-Palestinian human rights organisations that back a two-state solution. Suspensions or expulsions based on the principle of “guilt by association” would be an ugly and irrational turn for the party to take.
My own view is that the debate about whether Zionist ideology is or isn’t racist is best left inside a university classroom, where its origins, interpretations and context can be thoroughly debated and understood. That said, what I have witnessed in Palestine, backed up by any number of human rights reports, is that in practice the the Israeli state has perpetrated racist policies: ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and now a genocide in Gaza.
All that said, I’ve yet to see how passing the “Zionism is racism” motion will help end the slaughter of people in Gaza, improve Palestinians’ living conditions, stop their land being stolen and their children murdered, further their basic human rights or get them statehood. What it has done is divide the Greens and damage – at least in the short term – the chances of forming a broad leftwing coalition that could fend off the combined forces of Restore, Reform and the Tories at the next general election.
I’ve met Zack Polanski a few times. He strikes me as sincere and passionate, but that does not detract from the fact he could and should have handled this situation better. It is commendable that he called for significant amendments to be made to the motion, but when it came to the crunch he did not stay at conference to cast his own vote – citing campaigning in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection as an excuse. It all smacked of avoidance and, worse still, a leader unwilling to lead.
There are now 230,000 members of the Green party, many of whom joined because of Polanski’s leadership and ability to tap into younger voters fed up with the political establishment. Only a fraction attended the conference and even fewer voted for this politically toxic motion. It was therefore incumbent upon Polanski to make his view known. What has followed since is a split between sitting MPs and party members, and an endless round of broadcast media interviews designed to undermine Polanski personally and the Green party as a whole. Saying now that he wouldn’t have backed it puts him well into “the horse has bolted” territory.
In a positive sign, Polanski has shown some understanding of how dire this situation is for him (“Polanski must resign” trended on X for two days following his byelection defeat) by urging it to change its internal mechanisms to allow leaders to have more direction over policy. This is to be welcomed, and will hopefully serve as a warning to members who think a pyrrhic victory is better than an actual victory at the ballot box. However, to secure his position, and I for one hope he will, Polanski must also ensure that members who have expressed racist sentiment toward any group are quickly investigated and barred, and recognise that progressive politics is a minority sport in Britain – which means to have any hope of survival he must stop what leftwing parties are best at: infighting over pointless ideological purity tests that wreck any chance of electoral success and leave the field wide open to the right.
Sangita Myska is an award-winning journalist and presenter best known for her political and social commentary. She writes a twice-monthly column for the Nerve.