‘The Labour Party as a party of change is beyond dead’
The Green Party leader Zack Polanski has said he wants trade unions to affiliate to the Green Party, Left Foot Forward can reveal. He made the comments in an interview with Left Foot Forward at this year’s Trades Union Congress in Brighton.
Polanski told Left Foot Forward that he wanted to see a “much stronger relationship” between the Greens and trade unions. When pressed on whether that meant he wanted to see unions funding and affiliating to the Greens, he said: “yes to all of that”, going on to add “Where they [unions] have been affiliated to the Labour Party – are they getting what they wanted out of that relationship?” Polanski then said that the “Labour government is spitting in their faces essentially, saying these are the things you wanted, we’ve taken your money but actually we’re not going to give you any of that. Contrast that with the relationship between the arms trade and oil and gas who also fund the Labour Party and give donations to the Labour Party and are getting most of the things they want., so it’s a very asymmetric relationship.”
He went on to tell Left Foot Forward that he wasn’t “rushing towards” pushing for unions to affiliate to the Labour Party, instead saying that he wanted to “build relationships between myself and trade union leaders”, before adding “but of course if a union wanted to affiliate with the Green Party I’d be really open for that conversation any time.”
Presently, the Green Party has no mechanism for trade unions to affiliate to it, but Polanski said that there should be a conversation within the party about “what does a formal relationship with the trade union movement look like”.
In the interview, Polanski also responded to claims from Labour figures that the next general election will be a contest between Nigel Farage and the Labour Party, and that no smaller party can stop Reform. Predictably, Polanski rejected that notion and fiercely criticised the current iteration of the Labour Party.
Polanski told Left Foot Forward these arguments were “delusional” He said that “the Labour Party as a party of change is beyond dead – it’s buried so far deep that I don’t think anyone’s every going to be able to bring it back to life, no matter what their skills are”, later adding that “the Labour Party has been completely corporate captured”. He then went on to say that “the Labour Party is run by control freaks and they’re also run by people who absolutely hate the left and will do anything to squash and destroy the left”.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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