\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he Green party leadership election \u2013 by far the highest-profile in the party\u2019s history \u2013 has largely been seen through the traditional lens of left and centre. On the one hand is Zack Polanski, the deputy leader and London assembly member whose insurgent campaign has attracted a surge of former Corbynites to the party. He\u2019s seen as the left candidate. The incumbent, Adrian Ramsay (no relation to me), and his new running-mate, Ellie Chowns \u2013 both rural MPs \u2013 have been described as eco-centrists.<\/p>\n While there is some truth to that, it\u2019s not quite so simple: after all, Ramsay and Chowns, like Polanski, have called for a wealth tax and renationalisations, and have denounced Israeli genocide in Gaza. This is hardly Starmerite centrism. To think about the real distinction, it might be an idea to go to Lancaster in 2007.<\/p>\n At the time, the party was holding a tense annual conference that was split between two currents whose differences help make sense of what\u2019s happening today. I was one of the \u201crealos\u201d (realists). We wore suits, hoping any passing journalist would take us seriously. The other side were known as the \u201cfundis\u201d (fundamentalists), and they seemed to have exaggerated their hippy garb. I remember two people in druid gowns \u2013 perhaps because of genuine pagan beliefs, but probably also because they were trolling us.<\/p>\n The realo v fundi terminology originated in disputes within the German Greens in the 1980s <\/strong>over whether to enter coalition governments. <\/strong>In the party in England and Wales, the stakes were lower: in 2007, we were holding a referendum on whether the party should have a leader, replacing the then system of having two \u201cprincipal speakers\u201d.<\/p>\n For realos, this change was a statement of intent: it was about becoming serious. For fundis, there was, as the realo <\/strong>Natalie Bennett, who joined in 2006, put it to me, \u201ca great deal of concern that this would be a major change in the culture of the party\u201d. We won the referendum, but the leadership role it produced is highly limited. The leader gets the title, a desk, a salary if they don\u2019t have one, press office time and one vote on the party executive. They can advocate, but can\u2019t change policy, choose spokespeople or direct strategy. And they\u2019re easily replaced: elections are every two years.<\/p>\n Many older Greens remain queasy at the idea of a leader \u2013 certainly a \u201cstrong\u201d leader. Both this queasiness and the limited power have shaped the party ever since, and meant that leadership contests have tended to focus on organisation-building strategy or presentational emphasis and style, not policy. In the first one, in 2008, the realo MEP Caroline Lucas and permanently besuited 26-year-old Norwich councillor Adrian Ramsay were elected leader and deputy virtually unopposed; they advocated that resources be focused on the two target constituencies in which they were the candidates \u2013 leading to Lucas becoming the first Green MP in 2010.<\/p>\n Afterwards, though, she was busy in Westminster, unable to tour the country building the party on the back of this progress and, despite the thriving anti-austerity movement, in which many of us were active, party membership stagnated.<\/p>\n Our generation of (then) Young Greens developed a broadly shared understanding that the party was held back by two main things: the perception that we were just about the environment (rather than a party for the millions of leftwing voters abandoned by New Labour); and a fear of conflict. I had a mantra: \u201cGreens can either be controversial, or ignored. Too often, the party chooses the latter.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2012, Lucas and Ramsay stood down, and Bennett won the election \u2013 largely because she presented a serious plan for membership growth. She toured the country and cheerfully adopted leftist language. In her first leader\u2019s speech, she said: \u201cAsk not what the trade unions can do for us. Ask what we can do for the trade unions.\u201d By 2014, membership had more than doubled to almost 28,000. In 2015, it surged past 60,000 \u2026 until Jeremy Corbyn ran for Labour leader, and thousands left to join that project instead.<\/p>\n Many, though, didn\u2019t leave, and the legacy of that membership surge remained, both in party income and in hundreds of activists getting themselves elected as councillors (a phenomenon the MP and 2018-2021 co-leader Si\u00e2n Berry describes to me as \u201cNatalie\u2019s legacy\u201d). Since the end of Corbynism, space has opened up again on the left, and this, combined with effective mobilisation of resources, led to hundreds more Green councillors and four MPs in 2024.<\/p>\n But the last year has felt stagnant. With Starmer lurching right, there\u2019s an obvious space in British politics that the Greens are struggling to take. The average score in the past 10 polls for a Westminster election \u2013 about 11% \u2013 is better than ever. But sluggish compared with Reform UK.<\/p>\n In April, Adrian Ramsay was asked on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme whether he agreed with the party\u2019s policy that \u201ctrans men are men, and trans women are women\u201d, and failed to answer five times \u2013 triggering condemnation from the Young Greens. Two weeks later, his co-leader, Carla Denyer, announced that she wouldn\u2019t seek re-election and, in May, Polanski launched an energetic campaign with the slogan \u201cWe need bold leadership. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n Ramsay and Chowns\u2019 campaign is, instead, focused on their parliamentary roles \u2013 being \u201cin the room where it happens\u201d. This seems to me a mistake: historically, Greens have thrived when the leader isn\u2019t stuck in Westminster. For some longstanding members, Corbynites joining to \u201cback Zack\u201d is scary. Some fear Polanski\u2019s mooted ecopopulism, worrying it will attract people who \u201caren\u2019t really Green\u201d. Much of this fear isn\u2019t about policy difference, but culture. Older fundi-types who liked Corbyn\u2019s socialism but feared that the movement behind his leadership was a \u201ccult of personality\u201d now have similar worries about Polanski. Chowns and Ramsay, on the other hand, exude the kind of gentle, conflict-averse, consensual leadership style that the fundis used to advocate (sitting uncomfortably with their hyper-realo insistence on the centrality of Westminster). In other words, the Green party division isn\u2019t really so much about left and centre as it is about differing ideas about political power and how to wield it.<\/p>\n For me, Polanski takes the realo acceptance of the need for charismatic leadership and blends it with the fundis\u2019 belief in extraparliamentary organising and social movements. His position \u2013 that the party should be bolder in articulating its positions, that it shouldn\u2019t be embarrassed by opinions that the Daily Mail considers scandalous (but are shared with much of the population), that it should lead the left \u2013 isn\u2019t a new, un-Green one. It\u2019s one that our generation of members has been making for two decades. Indeed, it was the approach that delivered the vast membership surge in 2013-2015, which made the subsequent electoral successes possible. And it\u2019s the approach that will be needed to stop the recent membership surge directing their energies to Zarah Sultana\u2019s new project.<\/p>\n British politics is in a moment of flux. The two-party system is clearly breaking down. Huge numbers of people fundamentally distrust our whole system, and large numbers of seats, particularly left-leaning urban constituencies, are actively looking for a proudly progressive alternative to Labour. Polanski\u2019s bolder platform offers Greens a chance to step up. I hope the party takes it.<\/p>\n