But it's not realistic, is it? I suppose.

No, you're completely right.

So the reality is that the Greens only win when they run that sort of campaign.

And obviously that's a particularly extraordinary example of mobilisation, but something broadly similar happens wherever they win, basically.

I mean, there isn't...

You do get uplift when there's, like, huge seismic changes in the national mood and there were...

Plenty of examples of that in the May 2025 elections, 2026 elections, forgive me, you know, especially in London and stuff.

So, yeah, some thoughts from you on Burnham's labour and the environment in all of this.

Right.

Is not, uh, is not a campaign tactic that's available to them because there's no threat at all.

And effectively, of, of all the people there that are basically either now s- actively support the Greens or at least even Green curious, um, they've effectively got a free hit to just put another Green in Parliament, um, with an established Burnham government.

Like, they've got what they want, and they can complement it with another Green in Parliament.

And I think that, like, if you c- consider the question being posed in this election would be kind of like, do you think that, um, we're in a better situation today now because of the Greens than we were a year ago? A lot of people in that seat are gonna answer that question yes.

And also, you know, do you think that, like, the country's ongoing political life would be, um, enhanced by greater representation, you know, Green representation and greater platform for the Greens in, in Parliament? A lot of these people are also gonna say yes.

So I think there's a really compelling reason, a positive reason to vote Green in that seat, um, and put, you know, rather than just put yet another Labor MP in Parliament, put another, put another Green in to the left of the Burnham project.

Well, the current membership of the Conservative Party is the s- the ones of that 3 million from 1940 who are still alive.

Was that when you were working on that leadership contest with Zach Polanski, was that a thing that they did on purpose? Or is that just more kind of naturally where he wants to go, I think, as a politician? Well,

I think this is an example of one of the things which I think you can see as part of a continuity with with some of his predecessors as well.

So I know that, you know, Natalie's here to speak about this as well.

You know, I'd spoke to Natalie for the book and obviously know Natalie from when I worked at the Greens myself, but like one of the things that Natalie spoke about during her period of leadership was the difficulty in sort of escaping the straitjacket of the environmental question, basically.

And I think you were quite pleased if you went on the TV without a rubbish tip behind you or a seagull drenched in oil or something like that, right? And I think that successive leaders of the Green Party have, it's not for want of trying that they haven't been able to try and articulate ecological crises within the broader political and social and economic context of these ecological crises.

It's to Zach's credit and the wider prevailing circumstances of Labour disappointing so many vacating so much space to its left.

And the just general collapse in political legitimacy in this country over the last five, 10 years, well, 40 years, arguably, Polanski was able to occupy that space more effectively.

and so we are getting attention and we really should celebrate

Because once the Green Party and Zach Polanski looked like they were threatening him, to take a sort of more central place in British politics when it looked as if it's, well, as it still may well do, be a possibility that the Green Party have a role, an important role, then suddenly you attracted the attention of, the establishment from Keir Starmer to the Daily Mail and all the very, very many people around that who then off they went in the way that they've done for hundreds of years to anyone

that they perceive as a threat to their power.

The high point of that was obviously just leading up to the May local elections of this year, 2026, which was a sort of a coordinated attack on the Greens to a degree which I don't think has any precedent in the party's history.

and i think even in the past even when when sort of um attack pieces happened they were often um they were just more sneering and condescending whereas this was much more like savage and had a real political purpose to try and delegitimize the greens in a really really fundamental way which was a new problem for the party to have and i think like For most of the first year of Zach's leadership, I think that he marshalled that.

He and the team and the party marshalled that really, really effectively.

and actually used it as almost evidence that the threat to the vested interests of the political class was real.

This was a serious viable political project that was actually challenging the status quo and was actually used as kind of like a recruitment tool in a way and was part of the surging membership that you saw over those first few months.

Yeah, yeah,

Some of the more radical ideas, do you think that there is genuinely a big enough constituency who agrees with those opinions in the UK that could ever lead to a situation where the Green Party wins an outright majority?

Taking the Green Party's policies more broadly in the first instance, I mean, if you see the history of polling on this question over the last, I don't know, let's say since 2010, since Caroline was in Parliament for the first time, you will consistently find that rou- you know, routinely the Green policies are quite often the stated preference of the electorate.

The hurdle really has always been that they don't ever believe that the Greens can win either where they are running, like locally as a local candidate or certainly nationally.

That's, you know, that, that's the, that's the threshold the Greens have more traditionally had to traverse rather than the popularity of their policies per se.

I mean, I take your point on, you know, some of the, uh, some, some of the sort of policies that you're citing.

E- even among that, I would cautiously defend, especially the, you know, the harm reduction, uh, harm reduction-led policy on drugs has more popularity with a, you know, within, as a common sense approach to dealit- you know, minimizing drug deaths, et cetera, uh, among the public than might be assumed.

But, you know, broader than that, I think that the broader pat- platform of the Greens is a manifestly popular one.

Could you, could you explain how that works?

[laughs]

Um, the...

Yeah, I completely agree with all that.

And I, you know, to, to- To the credit of the whole left ecosystem of this country to ha- you know, to have, it is worth commemorating the fact that we have a sitting prime minister who is at least at the level of rhetoric committing to a break from Thatcherism and neoliberalism, which, which even in opposition Corbyn didn't really do.

He didn't really articulate political problems and solutions in those terms very explicitly.

So this is, you know, that is a, an achievement of the left.

Like I said, Polanski's played a role in that, that's huge.

But the Green Party under Polanski does feel, in terms of its public rhetoric, very different to previous Green parties.

And then as Katie was saying, you end up with sort of, um, voters being disappointed.

Yeah, absolutely.

But I mean, it's, you know, we've got this sort of binary of, you know, Starmer's approach of their, you know, not having solutions and being honest about that, and then now not having solutions and pretending you do.

And there's obviously a third, um, and by far more preferable option, which is actually having and enacting solutions.

[laughs] So that's, that's where Burnham needs to get to, right? So, you know, like the others have said that to his credit, I've been impressed by the comms for the first few weeks, and, you know, from my perspective, I'm really pleased to hear, at least at the level of rhetoric, um, a commitment to having a break from Thatcherism in this country, which in fairness, even someone like Jeremy Corbyn didn't even promise during his time as Labour leader.

Um, but then you need to see him get to grips with the substance of what that looks like.

And I completely agree with what was said around, you know, you can't keep promising things forever and not actually raise people's living standards 'cause people will get angry.

[laughs]