European Green Party

Also for the EU Parliament, which is notoriously slow in...

But the European Greens and Socialists are all for them.

Yes.

The thing is, men and cons are coming from this ballpark.

I was doing a bit of research for TU Dublin where I used to lecture.

But now, this year, I'm focusing on my role as the co-chair of the European Green Party.

So, I'm trying to keep the 40-something Green Parties around Europe singing from the same hymn sheet and heading in the right direction.

So, that means a lot of travel.

Now, incidentally, Green Europe, um, the, uh, Green Party in Europe refused to follow.

The European Green Party said, uh, "As EGP," that's G- Green Europe, "we ir- unequivocally distance ourselves what they... our party did in Britain while lambasting Israel's government." German Greens co-leader called the motion intolerable and unacceptable and at home a council, a former opposition leader in England, uh, uh, uh, quit the party.

The J50, which is a forum of diaspora Jewish leaders convened by our Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, declared in September that Zionim- Zionism is part of Jewish identity.

They're now working to keep the other green parties Apart from this one in Brighton in England, its aim is plain: Brighton must stand alone.

Another framing of it would be to say that both extreme positions result in some quite peculiar policies.

[chuckles] You could also say that, right? I guess the question is, should there be a safety valve so that your elected representatives are not forced to adopt positions that they are morally opposed to? And you see that reflected in the letter that the European Green Party Association, the grouping under which the Green Party used to sit in parliament, and that represents all its sister parties in Europe.

They wrote to the Green Party saying, "What does this mean? Is this now your official policy? Can you please write to clarify? Because we know that the conference voted this through, but we also know that every single one of your elected representatives voted against it.

So can you write back to us to confirm what is your policy?"

He's got, well, he's obviously got internal opposition, including from people as, you know, luminaries like Caroline Lucas and Green MPs have got questions off him as well.

He's got fires to fight among Jewish members and Jewish organizations without any doubt at all.

He's got international disagreement, as you mentioned, Alex, including disagreement and concern being raised by European Green counterparts.

There's even potential legal scrutiny of whether this policy conflicts with equality laws.

Arguing amongst themselves? Yeah, a little bit.

Not anywhere near as much of a bust-up as they had at the Greens, which we'll come on to in a minute.

Yeah, yeah.

But they...

So

anyway, I thought we'd look at what I perceive as the recent decline of the extremes.

So when we're talking about the extremes, I'm talking about the Greens at one end and Mr Farage and his Reform Party at the other end.

Just to set a context, I just thought I'd have a look at what the current poll of polls is saying about where these parties were.

Okay.

But the important thing here is that this isn't actually a policy that has unanimous support within the Greens itself.

Yes.

What is it? It's like four out of five MPs voted against it.

And that's raised a second argument about how the Green Party actually makes its decisions.

It's very deliberately a grassroots member led party, but membership has grown enormously.

And some senior Greens are now asking whether that system still works when such a tiny proportion of members are actually members.

taking part in these votes and i think this comes back to the whole question again of like we've spoken about on the other side of reform when a party sort of expands beyond being a sort of protest or statement vote you kind of have to if you're going to be a big dove you get it out like a big derg

But they must now all promote the concept as it is officially party policy.

It's led to, uh, the party being branded racist by Jewish groups, while the move was also criticized by the European Green Party, which warned the motion goes against the idea of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Meanwhile, the party's also gearing up for the Holborn & St Pancras by-election, where Polanski is standing for the Greens and really hoping to become an MP for the first time.

Now, we are recording this obviously the day, uh, before, um, the by-election, so we don't know what the result is.

He used to be our Prime Minister until only a couple of months ago and now he's not even an MP and there's a by-election to replace him as an MP.

The Greens might have been thought to be competitive in this seat, but they have essentially been rocked by quite a lot of infighting over their various positions.

And then that has culminated in a vote at their own conference in the last week about a motion to essentially say that the party believes that Zionism is a racist position.

And this has prompted real soul searching and real anger in parts of the party.

It's obviously prompted enormous hostility from all sorts of Jewish community groups.

It's prompted hostility from the European Greens who have sort of you know, parts of that movement have disowned it too.

And what essentially you have is the very fractious politics of Israel, Palestine, kind of dominating what was only a couple of years ago, kind of quite a sort of soft edged environmental party, because it has in this five party politics, it has tried to define itself by leaning into this very left wing politics that isn't all about the environment.

And it's done that under its new leader, Zach Polanski.