Blue in green
The Greens are not progressive in practice - Labour should attack them from the left, argues Bella Sankey
Brighton and Hove has long experience of the populist Greens – and we have learned a thing or two along the way. The first Green MP in England and Wales, Caroline Lucas, was elected in the seat I was born and raised in, Brighton Pavilion, in 2010. The following year, the Greens took minority control of the council, their first. Their record during this administration, along with another unhappy spell in office between 2020-23, reveals much about their party’s true values and priorities, and how they can be successfully challenged by the Labour party. Indeed, our thumping landslide in the 2023 local elections – which delivered a majority Labour council for the first time in 20 years – may be the only example of Labour successfully beating an incumbent Green-controlled council to date.
It is important to get this right. Labour’s critique of the Green party must be consistent and persuasive, speaking both to the heads and hearts of the former Labour voters whom the Greens are currently tempting away. At a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party last autumn, Keir Starmer described the threat from Reform and the Greens as a dual threat, with the ‘plastic patriots’ on the one hand, and ‘plastic progressives’ on the other. This analysis of the Greens is accurate, and it is this approach that must be expanded to make the case that Labour is the true progressive party –one committed to values-based policymaking, rooted in the lived experience of our communities. What we must not do is attack the Greens from the authoritarian right– whether on drugs policy, refugee rights or LGBTQI+ issues. This plays right into the hands of the plastic progressives, allowing them to argue they are the rightful heirs to the progressive crown.
This analysis is key because, both ideologically and in practice, the Greens are neither progressive nor left. Our experience in Brighton and Hove has shown that, at best, they are totally ideologically incoherent; more often, they are unable to make decisions or deliver anything; at worst, they are Tories on bikes.
Take housing, for instance. They make bold, eye-catching statements like ‘abolish landlords’ and ‘housing in a human right’. Yet in Brighton and Hove, they failed to even bring in selective landlord licensing, something our Labour administration did within one year of taking control of the council. They also let HMO licensing lapse and allowed the council house repairs backlog to reach record levels, with over 9,000 repairs taking longer than 28 days. We have already cut that down to 2,600, and our target is zero. We have also reinstated HMO licensing. The truth is that the Labour party does believe that housing is a human right. But we don’t just regurgitate slogans – we walk the walk as well.
Locally, we are unleashing an unprecedented boost to social and council house-building, directly purchasing houses to replenish those lost through right-to-buy and acquiring and converting council assets into temporary accommodation to end the scandal of rip-off landlords profiting from homeless-ness. Nationally, the Labour party has passed the historic Renters’ Rights Act and major reform of the leasehold system, all while injecting £39bn into the economy to build new affordable homes.
The Greens do not really believe in housebuilding; they are anti-growth, and think we can ‘abolish’ our way out of the housing crisis. This is as stupid an idea as it is dangerous. And here’s the rub: while they equivocate and ultimately serve the interests of the most powerful in our society, the Labour party rolls up its sleeves and protects the most vulnerable. It is not just housing and basic infra-structure they oppose. With no sense of irony, they also oppose the green infrastructure that will enable a just and fair transition to net zero. In fact, Adrian Ramsay MP, until last year one of their co-leaders, opposed wind turbines in his own constituency – something Ed Miliband has rightly needled him about from the dispatch box. How can the Greens say they are serious and progressive on the environment when they do not support sustainable energy sources?
It was the same story in Brighton. Though their slogan was ‘Net Zero by 2030’, when we came into office, we quickly realised that they had no plan for the council to cut the 98 per cent of emissions that come from non-council sources. More recently, they have even spoken out locally against our expansion of the types of plastic that can be recycled, saying they are worried it will encourage the purchase of plastics. The truth is that the Greens are uninterested in systems change. Deep down, they want everyone to adopt their lifestyle, often only available to those with wealth. They are simply not willing to change the systems that underpin daily life to achieve social or environmental justice.
And this point – that in practice, Labour is to the left of, more progressive and greener than the Greens – does not get made enough. We are the most significant force for progressive change in our country’s history. In the comparatively short period of time we have held office, we founded the NHS and established the Equality Act. Since 2024, we have upgraded workers’ rights and the minimum wage. This is an extraordinary track record.
The Greens have done none of this. They have never lifted a single child out of poverty and never passed environmental legislation. Yet take a look at their campaign slogans and you would be forgiven for assuming they were the party of radical change. Take their leader, Zack Polanski. He has certainly raised their profile, but the tactics and the cynicism are the same as we have seen from the Greens in Brighton. His messaging is dishonest: accusing Labour of austerity measures when we have initiated unprecedented increases in public spending, including real terms increases. As a former Liberal Democrat, Polanski is more embroiled in austerity than any Labour politician will ever be.
Already under his leadership, the ideological cracks are beginning to show. In the Gorton & Denton byelection the Greens welcomed the decision of George Galloway’s Workers Party not to stand – tacitly accepting the support of a party whose leader is a homophobic climate change denier. For a party that usually seeks to enforce ideological purity, such misjudgement shows that they, unlike us, do not have firm roots, values or principles to draw on. Rather, it is vibes-based politics.
But critiquing the Greens is insufficient to truly take them on. To do that, we must respond to the existential challenge of Caerphilly and Gorton and Denton and be the true progressives. We have done many progressive and transformative things in government, from housing to net zero and putting rail back under public control, which we must communicate better. But we must also reflect on our errors and be truer to our values.
To take one example, we were too slow to call for a ceasefire in Gaza when it was already clear that the Israeli government was committing atrocities. That has allowed the Greens to argue that we are complicit in those atrocities. And when the Greens started levelling this attack, we did not effectively push back against it, despite the fact that we got aid into Gaza, imposed sanctions on Israeli ministers, stopped arms sales and recognised the State of Palestine. And it is wrong to assume that this has only hurt us with Muslim communities. It was the main issue on the doorstep in a recent council byelection, at which the Greens won a seat back from us.
And if we really want to stay true to our founding principles, then undermining the hard-won rights of refugees and tipping them into insecure work is not the way. We are already restoring order to the immigration and asylum system by processing cases again and ending the use of hotels. We do not need to downgrade the rights of a vulnerable minority, when it is only safe asylum routes that will truly stop small boats.
When we beat the Greens in Brighton and Hove in2023, we did so with a positive message that could unite the left and defeat the right: a focus on practical delivery on housing and the cost of living, local pride, and leading with our values on climate change, diversity and inclusion. With an increasingly populist and aggressive Green party, which openly states it wants to replace Labour, we must respond by showing how our progressive vision cannot be extinguished by pretenders to the throne and highlighting that, in practice, abstract Green policies cannot live up to the socialist values they now lay claim to. If we can convey this message, we can unite the left at the next election – which may be the only way to defeat Reform.
