English Greens press Labor government with radical social and Palestine policies

The English Greens want to put pressure on the renewed Labor government with radical positions on social policy and the stance on Palestine. Its leader Zack Polanski told the Green Party's annual conference in Brighton that the traditional British two-party system no longer had to be taken for granted. The success of the Greens proves this: the party has a record number of members, now has more than 1,000 representatives in local parliaments and won a by-election to the lower house for the first time at the beginning of the year.

Polanski himself is currently running in such a by-election for a parliamentary seat in Westminster. He stands in the London constituency of Holborn-St. Pancras, which was made vacant by the resignation of former Labor Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. On Thursday, voters there will decide whether they want to send the Green Party leader or the local Labor politician Sagal Abdi-Wali to the lower house. Polanski's party conference speech was dominated by social-political issues that also dominated his election campaign in London.

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Solidarity with “Palestine Action”

He called for a massive expansion of the construction of social housing, for an “emergency rent brake” that would limit rent increases to the inflation rate for three years, and asserted that the Greens were the only party that had the confidence to “really tax the super-rich.” Polanski argued in Brighton that electoral successes for the Greens increased pressure on the Labor Party to make social policy moves.

Polanski also called on the Labor government under new Prime Minister Andrew Burnham to remove the activist group Palestine Action from the list of terrorist groups and to drop hundreds of criminal cases pending against publicly demonstrating sympathizers of the group.

The Greens benefited massively from votes from the Muslim minority in the lower house by-election at the beginning of the year after positioning themselves as radical critics of Israel and supporters of Palestine. In the application book of their party conference in Brighton there is a call to equate Zionism with racism in general, as well as a demand to work for the creation of a Palestinian state that “includes the whole of historic Palestine” and should offer “equal rights for all”. Whether and in what form this motion finds a majority will be decided after its discussion on Sunday.