Recycling Rhetoric

What’s this? A second post so soon after my much-anticipated return? Well, I’m nothing if not one for giving the people what they don’t want but this time one whole reader requested an expansion on my thoughts on the Green Party.

Keen readers will recall my previous post wasn’t particularly kind about them and this reader was left in want for an expanded version of my thoughts. With such a large outcry from the public, I couldn’t not give my take. Afterall, at first glance, many may assume the Greens would be the natural home for me: an increasingly progressive party, picking up the torch where Corbyn dropped it. Indeed, my issues with the Labour Party are well documented, if not slightly complicated and more nuanced than simply saying “They’ve lost touch”. I won’t be rewriting my reasons for my continued support of Labour in this piece but would rather direct readers to my previous piece, ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’ which covers this in greater depth. We’re nearly at a record smashing and truly world beating 100 views on that piece so give it a read!

So, the Greens. If there’s a political shift I’ve grown increasingly wary of, it’s the increasing tendency among disillusioned progressives to treat the Green Party as a credible alternative to Labour. The logic, on the surface, seems sound and completely reasonable: Labour isn’t moving fast enough on climate, housing, or wealth redistribution. Starmer’s cautious centrism grates (with the man himself being about as exciting as beige paint) and many feel understandably disillusioned and let down: believe me, I get it. The Greens, meanwhile, talk about social justice, urgent climate action, and a more compassionate politics; a homage to the Corbyn era of Labour that enthused so many to get engaged in politics for the first time, even if it was also deeply divisive.

And yet, despite all this, perhaps even because of it, I find myself deeply unconvinced. Why? Because the Green Party, as it currently stands in 2025, isn’t the answer. It’s not just that it lacks the numbers or the reach. It lacks something more fundamental: the ability to deliver real change in a way that is competent, scalable, and grounded in the realities of governance.

The realities of governance, in particular, are something I feel some progressives naively neglect, especially when assessing Labour’s current record (still less than a year in, by the way) and the Greens proposed alternatives. Governing is messy and our system is broken; navigating it and trying to fix anything, let alone 14 years of Tory rot, takes time: a nuance understood by the Green Party but ignored all the same in a cheap attempt to pick up lazily gained votes, all at a time when progressive movements should be uniting and constructively criticising in the face of the rise of dangerous right-wing populism and the Reform Party. Instead, we see low blows not grounded in reality but rather housed in a bubble of holier-than-thou sanctimony.

The Greens weren’t always this confused or vain. Once, they had a clear identity: the party of the planet. A consistent voice for sustainability, ecological reform, and intergenerational justice. They occupied a niche but important space in UK politics: pushing the major parties toward greener commitments, advocating for long-term thinking in a system built on short-term gain at the price of environmental catastrophe.

In recent years, however, they’ve drifted; not by broadening their platform (which is necessary and welcome), but by diluting their focus. Somewhere along the way, they stopped being the party of environmental transformation and started being the party of progressive posturing. Their rhetoric now covers everything from UBI to decolonisation, trans rights to AI regulation, all good things make no mistake, but often in tones that feel less like grounded policy proposals and more like a university seminar delivered via Instagram reel. All this to what end? Is this achieving anything? It’s certainly not persuading Labour; why would they listen to a Party that increasingly makes plain it hates them?

I’m not opposed to expanding a party’s vision, far from it: climate intersects with everything. But there’s a difference between building a movement and turning into a protest vehicle with a manifesto. The Greens have, in my view, increasingly become the latter.

Nowhere is the party’s internal contradiction clearer than in Brighton and Hove, a city that, on paper, should be a showcase for Green governance. In reality? It’s a cautionary tale.

Let’s start with the basics (something the Greens should have done when they took over the Council, but I digress). Brighton and Hove City Council under Green leadership became synonymous with administrative dysfunction. Waste collection services collapsed into chaos, with missed collections stretching across weeks in some areas. Recycling targets were quietly missed. The infamous i360, the seafront viewing tower that looks like a dildo, turned into a financial black hole, sucking up public funds while generating minimal benefit and providing none of the pleasure a dildo could.

There were moments of ideological purity: banning glyphosate, symbolic motions on global issues, but they often came at the expense of basic service delivery. Ask a resident if their bins have been collected, if the written off debt from the i360 has helped them, and they won’t be impressed by the council’s climate declaration. To this end, poor governance turns people off these good, progressive declarations as they become only associated with incompetent middle-class champagne socialists trying, and failing, to govern (yes, yes, I know I’m one to talk about champagne socialists but stick with me here).

This is the core problem: the Greens talk about systems thinking, but repeatedly fail when asked to operate within one. They treat local government as a moral platform rather than a mechanism to deliver day-to-day services. There’s an instinct to signal rather than to solve, to posture rather than to plan. And in politics, outcomes matter; just see what happened to them in the 2023 locals here in Brighton where Labour swept to power, ending Green control by gaining 20 seats, and for good reason.

This all brings us to Zack Polanski: the Green Party’s likely future leader, and the embodiment of its current identity crisis.

Polanski is certainly charismatic, and he talks a good game. However, charisma isn't competence. He rose to public prominence not through years of campaigning or local governance, but through motivational speaking, reality TV, and a past career in hypnotherapy, including a scheme to promote breast growth through suggestion (Yes, really and no I’m not letting that go it’s really funny).

To be clear, I don’t believe a colourful past should disqualify someone from public life. Politics needs people from outside the usual Westminster career ladder. Indeed, this is what arguably many western nations, swept up in the current tide of populism and wanting for a break from the usual, are crying out for. But if you’re positioning yourself as the moral adult in the room, you need more than theatrical delivery. You need ideas that are costed, coherent, and capable of surviving contact with reality. That’s where Polanski, and by extension his party, falls short.

What Polanski offers is a rhetorical vision of a better future, but no tangible route to get there. There’s a tendency to frame policy in sweeping emotional terms, but avoid the messiness of trade-offs, prioritisation, and detail. Increasingly, we see the Greens coming out as anti-almost anything the Labour government is doing, good or bad, without actually coherently arguing what they are for (or at least without coming across as massive hypocrites, see: Adrian Ramsey and his constituency level NIMBYism below). Passion isn’t the problem, strategy and coherence is.

Adrian Ramsay, the party’s current co-leader and one of its rare MPs, isn’t exactly helping on that front either. Ramsay’s opposition to key housing developments, despite an escalating national crisis in affordability and homelessness, lays bare the tension between environmental conservation and economic justice.

The Greens claim to fight for the next generation. Yet when the moment comes to back new homes, densify urban areas, or challenge local opposition, they often fold into soft-focus, liberal NIMBYism, defending ‘community values’ while worsening the structural scarcity that fuels inequality. This is where their platform loses credibility and their refusal to grapple with economic trade-offs becomes starkly apparent.

Meanwhile, as the Greens indulge in moral high-ground politics, Reform UK is rising on a diet of populist anger, economic fear, and cultural resentment. They have no coherent vision beyond immigration scaremongering and anti-establishment fury, but in a political vacuum, that’s enough to thrive.

Progressive voters tempted to send a message by voting Green must consider this: we are not in an age of political luxury. Protest votes may feel good, but they don’t build coalitions, and they don’t stop far-right drift. They simply fragment the opposition and, in doing so, make it easier for the worst actors to win.

Labour frustrates me as much as anyone. I want them to move faster, think bigger, and take bolder steps to reform a broken system. But I also know that Labour is the only party with the national reach, infrastructure, and democratic legitimacy to actually form a government and enact policy.

This isn’t about loyalty for loyalty’s sake. It’s about pragmatism rooted in principle. Labour, for all its flaws, has a record of delivery. When it governs, people’s lives improve, even if incrementally. It doesn’t always sing to the choir, but it has the capacity to write the hymn sheet (I was proud of that one). The Greens don’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever if they continue down this path of vague idealism, symbolic politics, and self-congratulatory posturing. There are some great ideas and people in the Green Party, but they’re trying to run before they can walk and this is a dangerous game.

In 2025, we don’t need more noise. We need action. We need housing, energy reform, decent jobs, and a sustainable economy. We need politics that works: not in theory, not on paper, not in a video, but in the real, messy, everyday world. Sadly, many new entryists to the Greens from Labour have now lost a meaningful voice in this, screaming from outside the tent in a comfortable echo chamber: it's no wonder they can't get beyond 8-10% in the polls.

Indeed, The Green Party still could have been a moral compass in that journey. Right now, it’s lost in the woods.