After this weekend’s very public spat between Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn, the principals of Your Party, membership of the Green Party shot up by more than 1,000 in 24 hours. It now sits at 78,741 members. It has been widely suggested that the real winner of last week’s feud is not Keir Starmer’s Labour but Zack Polanski’s new eco-populist Greens.
But even if Corbyn and Sultana hadn’t fallen out quite so publicly, Polanski’s leadership has already improved Green fortunes. Membership has increased by more than 10 per cent since his election on 2 September; “eco-populism” is clearly having its desired effect. But to some in the environmental space, Polanski and his ideas aren’t that original. Dale Vince, the eco-entrepreneur and Labour Party donor, says that he, not Polanski, is the “original eco-populist”.
Vince is a former New Age Traveller, a previous backer of the campaign group Just Stop Oil, and the founder of Ecotricity, a renewable energy company which he set up in 1995 with a single wind turbine he had used to power an old army truck on a hill near Stroud (in which he was also living at the time). As the owner of Forest Green Rovers, Vince was also responsible for overseeing the first Vegan football club when, in 2015, he made the team swap beef burgers for quinoa on match day.
In his 2020 book, Manifesto, Vince recounts how he went from “[an] enemy of the state to green energy tycoon”. It is here that he coined the term “green populism” – an idea which bears much similarity to Polanski’s eco-populism. “Zack Polanski’s definition of what he calls eco-populism is a word-perfect cut and paste from my definition of green populism in my book five years ago,” Vince said, “I’ve said before, publicly, this is green populism with a different badge.”
Though Vince thinks Polanski has stolen his line, he bears no animosity towards the newly minted Green Party leader. “I welcome it because he’s the first politician to embrace [green populism] and he’s a leader of the party,” Vince said, “for far too long on the left we have talked in a way that kind of bores people.” He pointed to populists on the right, like Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and even Donald Trump as having a better grasp of what it takes to win voters in this moment. “They cut through – I know it’s simplistic, often it’s so simplistic it’s dishonest. But we have to find a way to be simpler in our messaging,” Vince said. “I think it’s high time we had more exciting, cut through language on the left. Zack clearly gets it. Will he take votes from Labour? “I mean, it’s possible. But at the same time, it could force Labour to up their game. Competition isn’t a bad thing,” he added.
For Vince, as a Labour donor and someone hoping to influence the frontbenches, the real threat to the left isn’t the Green Party, it is Your Party. Vince thinks Corbyn and Sultana’s new vehicle could be responsible for handing the keys to Number 10 to Nigel Farage in four years’ time. “When it comes to Jeremy Corbyn’s party, I’m not such a fan,” Vince said, “I’m a fan of Jeremy. I’m a friend of Jeremy. But I think starting a new left-wing party now to split the vote on the left is a terrible thing to do.” He described this possibility – with its logical conclusion of a Reform government – as a “tragedy”.
Polanski and Vince have both obviously tapped into a growing need in British politics: one which calls for a left-wing, climate-focussed leader. Though Polanski is the UK’s most well-known eco-populist, Vince would like it to be known that he was there first.
[Further reading: Stop trying to make Zack Polanski happen]
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