Westminster is no stranger to the unpredictable and fraught political procedure known as the leadership election. Across long campaigns encompassing myriad audiences, candidates voice conflicting and sometimes irreconcilable visions. Dividing lines are summarily set out and stressed as candidates vie to place themselves on the right side of party opinion. Only then do they turn to the public at large.<\/p>\n
In this sense, the Green Party leadership contest<\/a>, currently playing out ahead of a vote in August, is both familiar and unique.<\/p>\n The Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) constitution mandates leadership elections every two years. But the contest scheduled for 2024 was postponed due to last year\u2019s general election. According to party rules, candidates can either put themselves forward as individuals or as a co-leadership team of two people.<\/p>\n This latter point has contributed to the contest\u2019s intriguing texture: a co-leadership ticket of Adrian Ramsay MP and Ellie Chowns MP<\/a> is facing off versus Zack Polanski, who is running on a single ticket.<\/p>\n Since announcing his candidacy, Polanski has pointedly critiqued the Green Party\u2019s co-leadership structure, saying<\/a>: \u201cI do think the movement needs a single figurehead\u2026 that\u2019s about someone who can go all around the country and amplify other people\u2019s voices.\u201d<\/p>\n For a party that rarely lingers long in the media spotlight, its leadership formation could well be hampering its \u201ccut-through\u201d. According to recent YouGov<\/a> polling, 75 per cent of voters \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d what they think of Carla Denyer, the Green MP for Bristol Central; 82 per cent \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d what they think of Ramsay.<\/p>\n Ramsay and Denyer are the party\u2019s current co-leadership team, but the latter announced earlier this year she would not seek re-election. Polanski serves as their deputy and as an elected Member of the London Assembly (MLA). Notably, he is not an MP.<\/p>\n This institutional angle reflects the campaign\u2019s prevailing dividing line. Chowns and Ramsay point to their joint records of winning seats in the House of Commons<\/a>, and stress the significance of their platform in parliament as a way of spreading the Green message.<\/p>\n Chowns, the MP for North Herefordshire, and Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley, overturned Conservative majorities of 24,856 and 22,364 (notional) respectively at the 2024 general election. In comments relayed this week via press release, Chowns said that those results \u201cproved that when we lead with hope, fairness and ambition, we can win anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramsay added: \u201cThis success wasn\u2019t an accident\u2026 It\u2019s the result of years of hard work, discipline and strategic leadership.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we bring \u2014 and that\u2019s what the next phase of Green politics needs. With the era of two-party politics now clearly over, there\u2019s everything to play for.\u201d<\/p>\n May\u2019s local elections brought about further such success, with a net gain of 44 seats. National opinion polls tend to place the party at around 8-11 per cent (up from 6.7 per cent at the general election).<\/p>\n Ramsay and Chowns believe that an organised Green presence could hold the \u201cbalance of power\u201d at Westminster following the next election, which they describe as the \u201cmost consequential in a generation\u201d.<\/p>\n ***Politics.co.uk is the UK\u2019s leading digital-only political website. <\/i>Subscribe to our daily newsletter<\/i><\/a> for all the latest news and analysis.***<\/i><\/p>\n Polanski\u2019s campaign has placed significantly less emphasis on his party\u2019s institutional responsibilities at Westminster, focusing instead on the possibility of expanding the Green message as a part of a wider movement.<\/p>\n The MLA is running on a platform of \u201ceco-populism\u201d, a consciously contentious counter to climate delay and denial, with a focus on movement-building and extra-parliamentary activism. Polanski\u2019s pitch proposes the Greens shift to the left of Labour, occupying vacant territory that he contends has not been fully exploited by the current leadership.<\/p>\n Announcing his candidacy in early May, Polanski told the Guardian<\/i>: \u201cWe\u2019re not visible enough. I don\u2019t want to see our membership grow incrementally. I want to see us be a mass movement. There\u2019s something here around eco-populism: still being absolutely based in evidence, science and data \u2014 and never losing that \u2014 but telling a really powerful story.\u201d<\/p>\n Eco-populism is not Polanski\u2019s term, though he is the first to bring it to the frontline of British politics. It embraces the political and rhetorical potency of the \u201cpure people\u201d vs \u201ccorrupt elite\u201d<\/em> dichotomy but casts a wider net, in the latter category, to include large corporations, institutions and individuals perceived as harmful to the environment.<\/p>\n In this sense, this strategy is both a strident challenge to \u2014 and an evocation of \u2014 the political style associated with Nigel Farage<\/a>.<\/p>\n Polanski does not resile from this comparison. He claims the Green Party can learn from the Faragist right about how to cut through, organise a political narrative and tell stories to a disillusioned public.<\/p>\n He told the Guardian<\/i><\/a> in his campaign\u2019s inaugural interview: \u201cPeople are done with the two old parties and we\u2019re in this dangerous moment where Nigel Farage is absolutely ready to fill that vacuum\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWe should never turn into Nigel Farage. But there are things we can learn in terms of being really clear in speaking to people.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview with ITV News<\/i> last week, Polanski expanded on this point. \u201cNigel Farage<\/a> tells a really powerful story, but so often it is based on disinformation and lies\u201d, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like he\u2019s playing politics on easy. He just gets to hit with people\u2019s emotions.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think we\u2019ve got to learn from that. Not with the same politics, I despise his politics, but with the storytelling.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just all storytelling needs to be based on facts and information, and that\u2019s really difficult. But transforming this country was never meant to be easy.\u201d<\/p>\n These comments reflect those Polanski delivered in a second Guardian<\/i><\/a> interview. \u201cFar too often, the party leads from a policy and data space\u201d, he stressed. \u201cOur MPs, who are excellent, are a scientist, an engineer, a renewables expert and a former MEP. We don\u2019t have storytellers. We have such a powerful story to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n Polanski has campaigned as he intends to lead: with regular appearances at mass rallies and by making adroit use of social media. Online, his contributions achieve strong engagement, akin to Reform UK\u2019s large social media presence. On this measure at least, and it is only useful in a partial sense, Polanski bests Chowns and Ramsay by some distance.<\/p>\n ***Politics.co.uk is the UK\u2019s leading digital-only political website. <\/i>Subscribe to our daily newsletter<\/i><\/a> for all the latest news and analysis.***<\/i><\/p>\n It is also relevant that both Chowns and Ramsay unseated Conservative MPs to achieve their place in parliament. From 2021 to 2025, the success of the Denyer-Ramsay co-leadership came, in part, because the partnership represented both the party’s challenge to Labour in urban areas and the Conservatives in rural areas. Denyer unseated Labour\u2019s Thangam Debbonaire, a former shadow cabinet minister, last July. Generally regarded as the first among equals, the Bristol MP led from the front in castigating Labour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the 2024 general election, the GPEW and its sister parties finished second place in 40 constituencies, 18 of which are based in London. (That leaves no shortage of seats for Polanski to run in next time around). Now, in all but one of these 40 seats, the Greens finished second to Labour.<\/p>\n Since the election of course, the political opportunities for the Green Party have proliferated. Polanski would argue that he is best placed, beyond parliament but firmly on the left, to exploit them.<\/p>\n The challenge for Chowns and Ramsay, if their leadership bid triumphs over Polanski\u2019s, would be to balance their imperatives as national spokespersons with their constituency-facing electoral incentives. Can they simultaneously establish the Greens as a clear receptacle for progressive disenchantment, while retaining a focus on local issues in their rural seats, where the Conservatives want to begin their comeback?<\/p>\n The counter-argument advanced by Chowns and Ramsay is that the Greens will not be able to \u201coutshout\u201d Reform with populist-style messaging \u201cbut we can outshine them.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramsay said this week: \u201cWe beat them by showing there\u2019s another way \u2014 a politics rooted in community, not polarisation; in hope, not fear. Huge numbers of people rightly feel utterly let down by politics as usual.<\/p>\n \u201cReform have tapped into that anger, offering false solutions based on misinformation and scapegoating. \u00a0People are crying out for a genuine alternative, real solutions, politics with integrity \u2014 and that\u2019s what the Greens offer.\u201d<\/p>\n This message was encapsulated more narrowly in a tweet Chowns posted over the weekend. Publicising an upcoming campaign event, the MP commented: \u201cWe\u2019re not here to hold signs. We\u2019re here to hold power.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll share why being in Westminster matters \u2014 and how we grow our influence to win bigger, faster, further.\u201d<\/p>\n The post was relentlessly assailed by activists and Polanski supporters who, suffice it to say, disagree. So visceral was the backlash that it appears the very purpose of the Green Party \u2014 its soul \u2014 is at stake this election.<\/p>\n Polanksi would constitute a seismic rupture with the established strategy of the Greens, as prosecuted under the Denyer-Ramsay co-leadership; his politics represent both an ideological and methodological deviation. With rupture comes risk, not least of all the choice to move the party leadership beyond the bounds of Westminster. The transition from parliamentary party to quasi-pressure group \u2014 a kind of de-professionalisation \u2014 reflects, on the surface at least, a curious trajectory, even an untimely regression into protest politics as relevance beckons.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For what it’s worth, Reform UK is moving at pace in the opposite direction. Farage has even disavowed the designation of \u201cpopulist<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But in a fast-evolving political landscape, the House of Commons<\/a> represents a significant but shrinking segment of the available political scenery. Farage has not delivered his most notable contributions from the (small \u2018g\u2019) green benches this parliament; his reputation for skipping the odd important debate, weaponised by his critics, has hardly dented his popularity among his target voters. Insurgent parties are platforms unto themselves. They create the stage. Polanski, who trained as an actor, has been a visible Green voice on the media for some time now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This contest is also bigger than the Greens. It looks set to have wide consequences for the future of the British left and the nature of its resistance to a Labour government that, by most accounts, is tracking right. Polanski has hinted that he would \u201croll out the red carpet<\/a>\u201d for left-wing MPs such as Zarah Sultana and Clive Lewis who are critical of the government. Touted by Polanski as a potential defector, Sultana sits as an independent MP and shows little sign of wanting the Labour Party<\/a> whip back \u2014 if her commentary in the commons and on social media is anything to go by. Lewis remains a Labour MP, but his messaging potentially aligns with Polanski\u2019s \u201ceco-populism\u201d. Independent MP Apsana Begum is another candidate for a possible defection, according to a recent PoliticsHome<\/i><\/a> report.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As for whether he would welcome former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to the Greens, Polanski told the New Statesman<\/i><\/a>: \u201cAbsolutely\u201d.<\/p>\n He added: \u201c[Corbyn] got three million more votes than Keir Starmer. Every time we\u2019re on the same platform we\u2019re talking about the same issues\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the specifics of the Green Party\u2019s long-term strategy, it is difficult to disguise the fact that, at this present moment, Keir Starmer shows little sign of fearing it. His march rightwards, on immigration rhetoric in particular, is informed by a cold calculation that progressive voters will return to Labour when the moment \u2014 a general election with Farage \u201crunning as prime minister\u201d \u2014\u00a0demands. Labour strategists instinctively disbelieve the Green threat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Put simply, Polanski wants to panic Starmer. One does not need to wait for a hung parliament to affect policy and shape the rationale of government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Green Party leadership election reflects some of the core divisions that characterise our political discourse more broadly. On both strategy and substance, 60,000 Green members will soon decide how they plan to oppose this Labour government \u2014 using established means and institutional avenues, or potentially more imaginative populist-style tactics.<\/p>\n In other words: do the Greens want a critical mass<\/i> that can effectively scrutinise the government, shaping its policy in the event of a hung parliament, or a mass movement<\/i> that can pummel it into submission?<\/p>\n Polanski\u2019s position has attracted greater media interest because it aligns with the moment: he has cast himself as an insurgent challenging establishment arguments. Chowns and Ramsay, potentially to their detriment, have done little to actively protest this framing. But both camps think the race\u2019s defining dividing line: establishment vs insurgency, or power vs protest (depending on one\u2019s perspective), reflects well on them.<\/p>\n Later this year, the Greens must choose whether to evolve with the times, following Farage\u2019s lead in a sense, or to go against the grain \u2014 advocating potentially outdated modes of opposition. The moment is volatile. Fundamentally, Chowns and Ramsay\u2019s case is one of caution. But risk aversion is not an overly compelling message, especially when the contest is an internal leadership election and the target audience is the party\u2019s activist base.<\/p>\n A sliding doors moment. A crossroads decision. A turning point. Pick your clich\u00e9: the Green Party\u2019s choice, for an institution still considered \u201cminor\u201d in the grand scheme of British politics, will shape politics far beyond it \u2014 and potentially for many years to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\nCritical mass<\/em> or mass movement<\/em>?<\/b><\/h5>\n