Zack Polanski has won the Green Party leadership election. The result was announced at an event in central London this morning. Polanski won 20,411 votes, to Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay’s 3,705, an overwhelming margin of victory. In a speech following his announcement as leader, Polanski said: “Thank you to every single person who voted for me. I promise to work every single day to deliver environmental, social, racial and economic justice. And for those of you who didn’t vote for me, this is a democracy. We don’t have to agree on everything. We just have to have common cause. And I give the same commitment to you. I will work every single day to grow this party. So, thank you very much.” The ...

No one was surprised outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. Instead, as word spread that an injunction – which would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed there – was overturned, there was an air of outrage, suspicion and conspiracy. “That was a foregone conclusion, wasn’t it? That judge is a Labour voter”; “I watched it on the news and before the judge even summed up, the graphic was up saying the ruling had been overturned.” David, 71, a retired IT consultant, told me he travelled some 50km to express his contempt: “I was listening at home in South London, and I could see which way the judge’s ruling was going… and felt I had to go and show that ...

Poor Russell Findlay. Already reeling from the resignation of one of his MSPs last week, the Scottish Tory leader has now lost another. That makes three in four months. To lose one may be misfortune, etc. Graham Simpson is the latest to flee the Conservatives’ increasingly denuded benches, becoming the first MSP for Nigel Farage’s Reform. Simpson appeared somewhat nervous, if not sleepless and traumatised, as he sat beside his new leader at the press conference where his defection was announced 27 August. He wasn’t looking forward to the responses from his erstwhile colleagues, he said. He will also now be the lightning rod for anti-Reform sentiment in Scotland, which is likely to intensify as next May’s Holyrood election approaches. It made ...

Torsten Bell is to help lead Budget preparations as Rachel Reeves seeks to recover from the most fraught period of her chancellorship. The former Resolution Foundation chief executive, who became pensions minister and parliamentary secretary to the Treasury back in January, will take on additional responsibility for economic policy.  A Reeves ally said that she values Bell as one of Labour’s “sharpest minds” and as someone who has “seen the Budget from both ends: in the room helping to write them and on the Today programme dissecting them”. Bell first entered the Treasury in his mid-twenties as a special adviser to Alistair Darling during the 2008 financial crisis before serving as Labour’s director of policy during Ed Miliband’s leadership. “He was a ...

The race to lead the Green Party is almost over. In just over a week’s time the winner of this torturous contest will be revealed: either the current deputy leader, Zack Polanski, or the co-leadership of MPs Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay. But, beyond the change in personnel, this has already been a doubly unusual contest for the party. First, the election has garnered more media coverage than previous contests, due to the party’s increased parliamentary presence and the ideological cleavage between the candidates. But second, this election has helped to expose a greater fault line among members about what the Green Party should be – and where it should go next. Polanski, who announced his surprise leadership bid shortly after ...

Donald Trump’s approach to governing can be summed up as “for thee and not for me”. He looks askance at the idea of American troops securing a peace in Ukraine, for instance. But naturally the tanks must roll into Washington, DC and the marines into Los Angeles. Militarism starts at home, in other words. Or note that Joe Biden is vilified as a corrupt politician in Washington while Trump’s family hoover up deals in foreign capitals. You can see the same pattern with free speech. Trump has little time for opinions that don’t flatter his own. Immigrants who dare speak out about Gaza have their visas revoked and media outlets who don’t publish obedient coverage are punished. And yet, the administration ...

A few years ago I joined the Green Party, what I believed to be the only welcoming political home for democratic socialists in Britain. This political trajectory – from the Labour Party to the Greens, as a democratic socialist – has since become a more well-trodden path. And it is no surprise to me given the political landscape we find ourselves in. I had been a Labour member, activist, staffer and spokesperson at various times over the preceding 13 years, and was probably one of the only people to join the Labour Party in 2009. As a 19-year-old studying politics at university, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, I observed Gordon Brown’s application of Keynesian economics that prevented another ...

Last September, just two months after Labour’s election, Keir Starmer declared that his government was “going to have to be unpopular”. That has proved to be one of the Prime Minister’s safer predictions. Earlier this week Labour achieved another unwelcome milestone: its net approval rating fell to -56, matching the level recorded by the Conservatives just before the 2024 election. Some will conclude from this that the government can simply do no right in the eyes of a disillusioned electorate. But this isn’t quite true. Polling by More in Common shows that policies such as the Ukraine negotiations, the minimum wage increase, the Renters’ Rights Bill and the sewage bill are both popular and salient. For the public, however, these are far eclipsed by ...