Zack Polanski: Do The Greens Have What It Takes?

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. Sign up to The Rest Is Politics plus to enjoy ad-free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room again early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestisPolitics.com. That's TheRestisPolitics.com. This episode is brought to you by Wordsmith A. I mean, increasingly, of course, in all the organisations we work in, we can get massively slowed up by the paperwork, the processes, the forms, the legal advice. And that's why, in business today, it's all of us legal teams, companies are facing a choice. Lead the AI shift or risk being left behind. And companies like Trustpilot, Deliveroo, Skyscanner are already leading the way, with Wordsmith A.I. alongside them. So, I'm giving every lawyer an invisible paralegal. Somebody who knows their history, drafts the first pass and frees up hours for complex work. Wordsmith handles the routines so that the lawyers can focus on the bigger issues. Crucially, this isn't to the moment something that's replacing lawyers. It's something that's taking out the more boring routine task, so they can really use their expertise, their experience, and their human judgment in the law. And it wasn't built in Silicon Valley. It was built like so many great things in history in Scotland, now benefiting companies worldwide. Shift's already happening. Wordsmith is helping legal teams around the world with clarity and confidence. There's free access to the Wordsmith Academy, plus their report on the future of legal skills. Visit wordsmith.ai/politics. Welcome to the rest of the politics leading with me, Rory Stewart. I'm the Aleister Campbell. And we are with Zack Polanski, who is the recently elected leader of the Green Party and is making something of a name for himself, both on social media and also in terms of driving up membership of the Greens, and is therefore becoming quite central figure in our political debate. Political experience thus far mainly in the London Assembly, but is actually from the north, from Manchester. Jewish, gay, and somebody now who is beginning to stake out a position on the left of politics, which is perhaps well beyond just the environmental issues that first brought the Green Party to public attention in the UK. So thank you for being here. Thank you very much for having me. Well, I love the introduction. And Zack, let's start with you, or childhood. Tell us a little bit about the young Zack Polanski, where you grew up, what kind of world you grew up in. So I was born in Manchester in Salford at Hope Hospital, which is nice slogan already. I grew up in North Manchester, came from a place called Hope. Indeed, exactly. I need to build on that by thinking there's something there. I grew up in the Jewish community, so I went to Jewish school. I then went to a secondary school where it was private and I was on a scholarship. I was really badly bullied at that school. One thing I do want to say though without tangenting too much is that head teacher of that school wrote to me recently and said two things. One, we've put in different safeguarding measures now for LGBT kids in particular. Would you like to come and visit them? I'm hoping to find out what they're doing. And two, you wouldn't believe how much media have written to us to ask about your taste at school and we've chosen to keep your anonymity or to keep you so guarded. So thank you very much. So was it the gay issue that led to the bully? Yeah, I think it was hugely that. And also, yeah, it wasn't so much anti-Semitism at that point, although it was certainly more internal to have gone from a Jewish school to suddenly being at a school where not everyone was Jewish. And so that brought beautiful things with it in terms of different communities coming together. But I think I definitely felt a sense of being kind of a fish out of water. And when did you come out? When did you? About 14. So it's pretty, pretty young, not to my parents, but to the school. And I think it was a sense of I'm being bullied anyway. Don't have any friends in that school might as well just tell the truth. And it's interesting because it's not a million miles away from some of my media strategy at the moment with some of the more kind of hard right stuff where they just come at you over your smile, the gaps in my teeth, and you just go, "Actually, if you own it, how can anyone attack you?" Like, I love my smile. They can talk about it as much as they want. I think it's often a distraction from actually talking about substance or policies. And I think some of that developed. Yeah, it's hard to go. This was a significant event in your life that made you the politician you are. And you always say politicians do that. And I always just think it sounds like bullshit to me. I think we're a accumulation of lots of different experiences. But it's interesting you used all sorts of-- I can't say it right. Sorry. So it's interesting the first-- one of the first things you said there was you came out not to your parents. What was-- what was holding you back on that? Yeah, so my parents got divorced when I was 11. They're quite private people. So I'm cautious about talking about that, divorced too much. But in terms of the experience on me, it was pretty devastating. I had a journalist that went name them yesterday who asked me like four or five times what the experience of having divorced parents was like. And I was like, it was awful. And they were like, can you tell me more about that? And I was like, you can speak to pretty much any kid of divorced parents. I'm sure sometimes there, you know, the divorce goes well and the kid is fine. But generally, it's not a good experience for anyone involved. And I think the particular thing, it was just a very logistical thing. I had a father in South Manchester, a mother in North Manchester, who weren't talking to each other for a while. And so just long bus routes of an hour and a half at weekends of staying with one of them for the weekend and then on the Monday. I'm not pretending this is unique to me. But what it was was alongside being gay, alongside not feeling like a particularly belonged at school, it was just kind of a mess of experiences. Everything changed when I came out. And actually everything changed when I was disinvited from staying at the school I was at. And suddenly I went to a public college, Rich Danyas and Marple. Started to study drama, met my tribe. Being gay was no longer a kind of a secret or a bad thing. In fact, I was the coolest kid in town because I was gay. I'm Russell T. Davis's Quarers folk was just coming out. And so I think it was a real moment where being gay was seen as a superpower. If you actually owned it and I remember that time being incredibly thrilling. Tell us a little bit about your Jewish identity. So you chose actually to change your name to become more Jewish from the names that you're parents have. I had a bone to pick with Mr. Campbell on this. I know you do. I get your point. I get your point. I've defended you over that because I didn't know the full story. Yeah, and I think what you said was totally fine. And I think it's also right to ask for the full story. Yeah. I think the first thing to say is it's a very common experience to lots of Jewish people that so my go right back to my ancestry were in Latvia. Very Jewish town. In fact, I think entirely Jewish gets displaced because of the pogroms. Again, a very common story in Jewish ancestry. End up in Ukraine. Again, that feels particularly relevant at the moment. More pogroms. So we flee again. Then fleeing the Nazis and then end up in the UK. Now the really interesting bit about this story is I grew up knowing this story, but I've been told that we changed our name to evade the Nazis in Germany or Poland. In a few years later, find out no, actually, it was when we arrived in the UK. It was through evade anti-Semitism in the UK. Interestingly, it turns out it probably wasn't Polanski. It was Polinski. And again, a very common experience of Jewish ancestry that because the documents are written and they're rushed, they say different things on different documents. But once I changed my name once, it's like I'm not changing it again now. You're not going to do it again. You're right. And also just on the name change because people then go, well, what about your first name as well? Because I went from David to Zach. I'm really, there was two things. The main thing was I had a stepfather who I really didn't get on with to put it lightly. He was called David. And people used to say to my mum, oh, is this big David a little David? And suddenly I was like the little version of this man. I actually, he's dead now. So I'm careful with my words because he's not here to defend himself, but that I didn't get on with. And so it just felt important to get in the name. Just to explain to those who didn't hear what you were saying there when you said the other boat would be, I was talking about Stephen Yexley Lenin. I mean, I've got other bones picked. I'm sure you have. We get on with those calling himself Tommy Robinson. And I said on the podcast, never trust somebody who changes their name. And you've given the reasons. Okay. Very good. I'm glad that's all clear. I wasn't really the exercise. Yeah. I'm glad you were. Back to you. Back to you. So I was actually going to talk a little bit about your Jewish identity and how that's helped you to understand the views of some Jewish people in the UK that they feel they're being unfairly criticized over Gaza and that some of the criticism of Israel, they feel antisemitic. It'd be interesting to hear how you, as somebody who is Jewish, very strongly Jewish wants to identify strongly as Jewish, went to a Jewish school, speaks about the two different sides in Gaza and understanding views of different communities here. And just on that, you, I really quote me of all the criticism I've received in my career as a politician, the most vicious has come from so-called mainstream Jewish communities. Yeah. So I guess if I start from beginning with question and then I'll come to this bit, which is, as I say, a group in the Jewish school, I felt strongly connected to Israel. I've never actually visited Israel, but I think again, it's a very common experience in Jewish communities that you grow up knowing that Israel is the place that people fled to with the exact stories I was just talking about about Jewish diaspora and displacement. And that was until fairly recently, actually. And then around, I think it was 2019, 2020 had just been elected for London Assembly. And a group got in touch with me called Breaking the Silence, which was a group of ex-ideaf soldiers who were speaking out against the occupation. This was before the terrorist attack on October 7th and before the ongoing genocide. Obviously, things did not start in October 7th. This is a whole history of struggle and oppression. And I sat down and listened to them and I felt myself getting defensive over what they were saying in the meeting, just internal feelings of this is so different to the narrative that I've grown up with and the narrative of Israel needs to be defended. Israel is under attack all of the time. And narratives is always a little bit of nuance and truth in everything. But just listening to their experiences and just knowing as I looked at them and you had questions to ask, then none of my questions made any sense, none of them were coherent, because actually everything they said I knew was true. And actually what I've been doing was denying it to myself because of the uncomfortability of sitting in that moment and the uncomfortability of your worldview or things that you really believe changing. Now I should say it's not that, you know, I grew up into a school but it's not like I was a huge defender of Israel and it would have been fine if I was, it's fine for people to change their mind. But it wasn't even that strong in me, it was always something that I just pushed down as was not my thing to talk about. And I hadn't had a lot of media interviews at that time, I wasn't even an elected politician but even in that run-up to the election, I remember being asked a few times about Israel. And my answer always was that I'm Jewish, I'm not a Jewish politician, I'm a politician that happens to be Jewish and I'm not here to answer questions about Israel. And some journalists reasonably would say, but it's a country in the world, you must have opinions, they said that's fine as long as you ask me about my opinions on other countries, but you can't expect me as a Jewish person to be an expert on Israel. I've now changed that a little bit, I don't think it's a responsibility of any Jewish person to speak out against Israel's ongoing crimes. But I do feel like as an elected politician who has a leadership role and is in the Jewish community to have spoken out against the genocide in ways that are nuanced and complex but recognize that the genocide for me is not complex, it's not me saying that, it's pretty much every scholar of genocide around the world saying this and the UN and just for final thing to say, so I can see a dine to come in. Is it interesting that there's an article yesterday that came out in the Guardian that showed the amount of British Jews that have moved to the green party and interestingly to reform? I think the headline was slightly misleading because the disparity is much more significant for the green party. So I was taking a position that I didn't necessarily, in fact, I thought would be unpopular in the Jewish community from experiences I've had, but I think it's a politician's job to tell the truth and not to always go to where people are at, but to say, this is what I believe, I'm listening to, I'm not lecturing you, but I'm not going to shift what I believe and let's work together through narrative to bring you to where I think you should be, but it turns out that's been happening anyway since 2024, more and more Jewish people in Britain are saying I'm deep and comfortable with what's happening in Israel and I'm going to speak out against it. One of the things that astronauti experiences a very, very large extent of criticism, I mean, in my case, from close Jewish friends of mine who say, I don't want to listen to the podcast anymore, you talk far too much about Gaza and I wonder whether how you think about that and how you deal with that. I mean, effectively what they're implying is that we're one sided that we talk too much about Palestinian suffering, we don't focus enough on Israeli suffering. There's a lot of emails that astronauti get saying what's the alternative and the assumption is that everything the IDF did was necessary and I find it particularly difficult when I'm dealing with people who I've known since I was a child and who are close friends of mine and who are now refusing to listen. How do you deal with that when you're in Qatar? Yeah, I think it's horrendous for anyone to be going through any suffering and I think that's the first thing to come from is a place of compassion. I think there's a legitimate criticism that I could talk about Sudan more and maybe we can now. I also think there is a difference here one because I'm Jewish and although again, to repeat, I don't have responsibility to talk about Israel. I have chosen to not allow people to use other people's Jewish identity to say that everyone is defending the Israeli governments again, ongoing genocide, so it felt important to come in there. I think the second thing to say with that is, so I have a podcast myself. There's an episode that's about to come out with a woman called Rachel Shabby who wrote a book about anti-Semitism and this is two Jewish people having a conversation about anti-Semitism. You might notice that I'm a quick talker. I think fast enough just prefer to communicate and as long as people understand me, which I think they do, I don't think it matters with speed you're talking. I noticed when I was doing that interview, how slow I was talking and how slow she was talking. I called it out, not for her, but I said for me, I'm choosing every single word right now carefully that I'm speaking like a politician, not the human being that I normally pride myself on being first and the politician afterwards. The reason why I'm doing it is because I'm so aware that in a conversation about Judaism and Israel, we can be called anti-Semites so quickly if we just step on the eggshell that's somewhere. Now I think it's good for people to be considerate, I think we should all consider our words and I do consider my words, but it shows the kind of internal fear I had that even as a Jewish person speaking to another Jewish person, I thought I don't want to say anything that is endlessly clipped where people go see his Jewish and his and anti-Semite and I think it's for culture that has been bred in this country and not just with anti-Semitism but lots of different issues where people are terrified to talk about the issue for fear of offending someone. Now, before I sound like I'm going on a kind of cancel culture gone mad tangent, I'm not at all. I think people should be compassionate and respectful and I think there's red lines about how we should talk about things and how we engage with things. How do you respond to those people who say that you're a Jew hating Jew anti-Semite? How do you deal with that when people say that to you? I can tell you what I do on my best day and on my worst day. On my best day, I take a deep breath, I engage with them, I have a compassionate conversation where it doesn't come from judgment and I'm listening and I'm not trying to win a point. I really do that. I've done it before and very often it feels like it's not coming from good faith and so when someone's attacking me and I feel like they're just trying to score a political point, I meet fire with fire and frequently they lose. I- There's quite a match hit statement. Indeed. But on this particular issue, I feel very strongly about it. I'm really proud to be Jewish and to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Semitism. Actually, as a Jewish person makes me feel less safe in this country. What do you actually say when you're sitting here with somebody who makes an accusation? What do you say to them? Well, I think it's an absurd accusation because I'm really proud of being Jewish. I do lots of work with the Jewish community. I'm always very happy to visit a synagogue or a community space. There's an amazing group called Namo, a group of British Jews against the occupation. I often go to meet with them during festivals. We break bread together. We sing together. I'm not religious, but we pray together in terms of the tradition of praying together. And that's a beautiful community experience. I am outraged that there are British communal organizations. In fact, I'll go further. We have a chief rabbi who I think has more than overstep the mark on many times, where he's not speaking for a Jewish community. He's certainly not speaking for me, but I don't think he's speaking for the wider community. He is clearly speaking in the interests of defending the Israeli government. Now, as a personal view, he's totally entitled to do that, and I'm totally entitled to disagree with him. But there's someone with the role of chief rabbi to politicize what's happening in Israel as a defense of a Jewish community in Britain. I think he's deeply damaging in the same way as so many things within our politics, where politics and people's ideas and personalities get mixed. We end up in a dangerous place where institutions crumble. I think we're at risk violently agreeing on this. We're strongly as sympathized with your position and your predicament, not something. I was very interested in something where we might get more disagreement or be more controversial. I'm sure we can find a question. Put your politicians hat on. Which was your sudden reference to cancel culture, which I think is a really interesting question. Because I teach in an American university where this stuff is absolutely raw, right? We have people being de-platformed for seeming too pro-Israeli, de-platformed for being too pro-Palestinian, people's visas taken away, academic, sect. It's really difficult, or has been over the last few years, creating university spaces where you are able to say, we're going to have some idea of freedom of speech. We're going to tolerate people having quite offensive different views here because I really need to allow students to try to hear different opinions and feel safe in the classroom. I mean, unfortunately, I sometimes feel teaching a little bit like I'm walking on eggshells and I have to choose, you know, if I'm teaching British colonialism, I have to choose every single word, so carefully in case- Or to be in close to home, ruin over in Glasgow the other day. Michael Goe was due to speak at the Glasgow University for a debate about the Middle East and was advised in the end, probably best you don't come because we can't necessarily guarantee your security. He's got very strong pro-Israel views. I just wonder what you think about that as well. Yes, so let's start with Michael Goe because actually he edits his spectator and they recently awarded me leader of the year. And I had a real moment where I said, you know, that's actually a very flattering lovely thing to say. I also have no intention of engaging with the spectator. They pretty much put out hit pieces on me literally most days and most days they're about personality things and not about policy. So I don't have a lot of time for that publication. At the same time, I recognise as a politician, I don't want to just talk to people who are already grew with me, always want to be stretching out both what I believe and understand and what other people believe and understand. I've really had this conversation on the podcast because when I first initially started it, I was going to invite people I vehemently disagree with and have debates with them because I know that's what people want to hear and it's interesting and it stretches me and it stretches them. And for the first few podcasts, I just stayed in what I would say is a kind of more pleasant environment for me. I just got people in that I really respect for their expertise. And I just thought, what would it be if a politician just sat and listened to people who are smarter on the subject than they are, in a way that I would take a briefing, but actually I just take the briefing publicly and ask the questions I'd ask privately by asking publicly so I'm educating and activating the kind of base who are watching me. And as I got a month into it, I just thought I spent so much time on other media organisations having these awful conversations where I'm not really getting my point across because I'm about to be interrupted in 30 seconds and I've got very agile at dealing with that and I'd love for compliments, but it's also it's not a nuanced way of dealing with it. It's trick ways I learned to deal with it where we're not really talking about the question. I just get out of the question, everyone thinks I've dealt with it brilliantly and then we move on. And so I've decided to keep that podcast as a place where I can have these more nuanced conversations because people are telling me over and over again how lovely it is to listen to a podcast and I imagine they get a similar feeling with this one where people disagree respectfully. There isn't the shouting and the arguing that drives kind of traditionally drive content and so media, but actually people are enjoying just as much hearing more complex conversations about difficult issues. So that's the first thing. I think there's a space to cancel people and go, "You're not even cancelling them. You're just not inviting them in the first place and you're going, 'Actually, this is a space where you're not necessarily going to find something that fends you or you find difficult. It's just going to be a bit more new one.' So is it not wrong that Michael Gove can't express his views? All three of us disagree with a lot of everybody stands for, but he can't go to one of Britain's best, most famous universities safely and make a point because there's a fear of violence. And why did you not immediately say that? That was rather odd. You gave a two minute answer and you avoided immediately saying. Well, this is what I read as exactly in the get-took. I wanted to reference why I didn't accept the Spectator Award and apparently, due to the Hartley-Burah collected it for me, which is excellent trolling. Yes. But the reason why I didn't accept it was I thought, you know, it's not a space that I want to go into. So that doesn't mean I will get this way I want to go into universities. That's different. I think we've all got choices about what we listen to, where we engage and where we go to. As a politician though, or at a university, I think it is important to stretch yourself because you always want to be having new ideas and listening to new ideas. So in the university, I think we're getting to the difference between someone's belief, which I think people can believe what they want, no matter how offensive, and someone's action of behavior. And I think when it moves into the places of harassment or where someone is feeling unsafe, and I accept that you're saying as a lecturer, you feel unsafe, so this has to work both ways. How are we treating each other and how we're creating spaces where we can have new ones in complex conversations where people can be offended, but crucially, the most marginalized person in the group, we're making sure that their space is a space where they feel free to express themselves and they feel free that they're not being personally attacked, and they don't feel unsafe in those space. Those are complex, but I believe that we're big enough and smart enough to do. Okay. So you'll know a politician, you're the leader of a party, which, you know, a few years ago was seen as a bit of a joke, and now is maybe seen as a bit more seriously. You had recently a German green party leader who became foreign minister in the German coalition government. You're on record as saying, I would not want to have any relationship with Donald Trump. Let's just say, well, there's more nuance to that. Okay. Tell me the nuance. Well, I don't want a diplomatic relationship with Donald Trump, so I actually was much more nuance what I was saying, I was saying the state visit was outrageous to read, carpet, me a mount that was spent on security. That's different to a diplomatic relationship. I definitely have a diplomatic relationship with any president, any prime minister. I've been criticized by someone on the left because I included Israel in that. But what I would say to that is if you don't have a diplomatic relationship with another elected official, are you going to war with them? Are you invading? Like, I don't know what it looks like if you don't have a diplomatic relationship. That diplomatic relationship doesn't definitely not mean your best friends or your sharing arms or even necessarily that you're trading with them. It just means as simple as, are you speaking to them? Are you listening? By the way, I include President Putin in that for which again, I've been heavily criticized for, but it seems genuinely sociopathic to me or certainly xenophobic to kind of look at any other world leader and go, if they were willing to come to a table, I wouldn't come to that table. No matter how much I detest their politics, no matter how much I might condemn the violence and the invasion and the horrific massacres that they're inflicting on people. The idea that I wouldn't come to the table, well, what is the other solution of them? That's another reaction, which I always think has to be the last solution. So I don't think any of those things are in contradiction. I can't stand Trump to be clear, but I'd still have a conversation with them absolutely. Fine. So your first sort of political party was the Lib Dems. Were you ever tempted by Labour? No. Because? Proportional representation, which is the main reason. Okay. That was the positive of the Lib Dems. Was there anything about a Labour party, the Labour Party's values and traditions and history that attracted you at all? Yeah, the trade union movement, I think I was definitely always interested in because that felt to me, you know, I just said Proportional representation, well, I'm really talking about its democracy and grassroots movements. If I can rewind one minute back to even before I got into the Lib Dems, so I was working as a community theatre actor doing something called theatre of you pressed. So this began in the 1970s. Obviously, I wasn't there in the 70s in South America and the Favellas, some of the poorest areas. And it was where actors would go into a community. And the audience weren't allowed to be called spectators. They were spectactors. So they had to be involved in the theatre that was happening. So they would watch scenes of oppression that they had described. And then, but while called this rehearsing resolution, he would say to people, don't complain, don't moan. What would you do if you were in this situation and how can the community support each other? So you would do it over and over again until you'd rehearsed how you would challenge power and authority. So when I was doing it as an actor, interestingly, I was working with migrants, working with disabled people and actually I did one project with Amnesty International with X's Rayleigh Combatants, an ex-Palestinian combatants, which was my first kind of foray into some of the Israeli politics as well. I was doing all of that and I loved it and to my colleagues who still do that, I think it's some of the best work you can do. And I also felt like it had reached a point where despite the fact it seemed collectivist, why I was really saying to people was if you're empowered enough and articulate enough, you can get through anything. I was working with a group of black women where I was looking at them and I was thinking, the system is so fundamentally broken, you can be brilliant articulators of your position and you can ask for allyship but the system is fundamentally broken in terms of the inequality towards you. And so you basically saw Labour, Tory, the establishment parties as essentially being top down the creators of that system? Yeah, I felt like they were fundamentally authoritarian. I still very much feel that. That actually if there is a moment of true democracy and grassroots, that scene is chaotic and unwieldy and politicians don't like that because they're not in control, there's kind of that lack of Macavellian, you move this piece then they move that piece. I'm someone who really, really enjoys a space where actually I guess it's maybe coming from creative arts where things are happening that are unexpected and I'm just responding to them with my values and working to take people with me. You may want to most eccentric decisions in the world. You joined the Lib Dems in 2015, right? So this is post-claim, this is post-the-betrayal on the tuition fees, this is post-them going into coalition with the Tory government. I mean, who joins the Lib Dems? In 2015. Quite so, there's two things here. One, I absolutely believe the myth that a national economy is like a household budget and I think that's one of the most fundamental metaphors in politics that needs to be eroded. That's about it. Well, and interestingly, the people you believed in, you believed in it. Absolutely, I mean. I do. And so other than doing this theatre of the press work, I had no party political experience. In fact, I used to be ashamed to say it but I've started to own it. If you'd asked me a few years earlier who the lead to reopposition is, I wouldn't have known. I don't know when interest in party politics. I just thought it was nonsense. The only thing I saw, which I think is for lots of people, was prime ministers' questions, two people screaming at each other, no sense of compassion or value or anyone actually caring about things but just theatre. And I thought, if we're going to create theatre, let's create theatre, that actually means something. 2010, Tory Lib Dem coalition comes in or sterile comes in, tuition fees are implemented. Election comes in 2015. The entire country punishes the Lib Dems and you join the Lib Dems. Why? Visiting the Occupy movement. So that must have been what 2009, 10 and being really interested in what they were doing. But then being tuned off as soon as it started to talk about party politics and winning over electoral politics because I remember thinking, I'm really enjoying the kind of the grassroots nature of people coming together and having citizens and assemblies and meeting together. So then I got disconnected from it. Anyway, the real answer to your question is Tim Farron, which is at that time he was seen to be the leader of the left. And he was going to be this big new thing for the Lib Dems and I was so excited when he was elected. I thought, everything's going to be great. Day one, he can't answer a question if gay sex is a sin or not. I don't remember feeling pretty disillusioned. A few months go by, then there is a military intervention in Syria or a planned one. There's not going to be a vote on it. It seems to me fundamentally undemocratic that our elected representatives aren't going to vote on things, particularly from the background I've come from, which is community theatre, which is about empowering grassroots. I say to the Liberal Democrats, as a member, what can I do to make sure there's a vote? And they're like, just nothing. They're going to do what they want. So I challenge that Davey of all people on this and effectively, then there is a vote later on. But I think there's this kind of increasing sense that there isn't true grassroots democracy here. I then meet Sean Berry and Natalie Bennett to form a leaders of the Green Party. In fact, there's a better story than that just before that. So the first time I meet Natalie Bennett is because I'm doing a debate for the Lib Dems. No one from a Lib Dems wants a debate for the Lib Dems. I'm tremendously inexperienced. So I have my first debate with Natalie Bennett and Kirstaama. And we have about 20 debates together because Kirsta is not an MP, so he's gang around Camden. This is what we've been going to try to get elected in the summer's time. Yeah, it's all around that same time. So you're all campaigning together in North London? Yeah, exactly. And we're having these debates. Well, campaigning against each other. And you've been somewhat of a campaign together. And what people saying, you're from Manchester, why are you running for the London Assembly? And no, because I've lived in London for ages by that point, almost like 10, 15 years. And I think there's a sense as a Londoner that people are transitional and we accept people. But what was really clear to me at those times and those debates, Natalie was really, really impressive. There was so much she said that I thought I really, really agree with this. And kept going home to my partner and saying to him, they're really right about everything. And Kirstaama? Kirstaama, so one of the first debates we had, in fact, my very, very first debate ever, he got booed by the audience and I got cheered. And I think it was a sign of things to come. Ooh, he just kept refusing to answer questions in a very kind of legalistic, very long monotone ways where the chair would be like, you're not answering the question. Was this an all-party hustling? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, totally politically and experienced, I didn't know a huge amount about what I was standing for, but knew that proportional representation in particular was the thing I really cared for. I was there to go get people to to commit to proportional representation. Turns out I didn't need to convince Natalie Bennett at all. She was completely all over it. I've had lots of conversations with Natalie since about why was the green part? You're not talking about proportional representation. I would have gone straight to the green party. She said back then we used to get 10 seconds of airtime if that. Are we going to talk about something that was quite abstract at that time, a voting system that meant nothing to people? Or are we going to talk about the climate crisis? Or indeed back then she was talking about Syrian refugees, which again was another thing in those 2015 debates, saying Natalie Bennett talked about Syrian refugees, where I thought I've never seen a party leader talk about this issue. And the very final thing was I met a green party member who I ran against at the London Assembly who said you are so much more green. Everything you're saying means you should be in the green party. Here is a ticket to green party conference. It's totally free. Go along. You will find the people that you feel like is your natural home. Marrest is history. So you become a green. And one of the criticisms that comes your way, sometimes from some of your party colleagues, is that they don't think you're focused enough on the issues that makes the green party kind of what it is. So was there any part of you that was tempted to go to COP in Brazil? Well, the first thing I'd say is that yesterday for the third time, those are poll where we have overtaken the Labour Government and we're in second place. Since I was elected leader, we now have 170,000 members. That's 100,000 new members since I become leader. I think people know that the green party care about the environment. In fact, when polling comes out amongst other parties, we have a most trusted party on the environment. Yeah, but on the bigger picture, the debate feels very strong to me. And I say this all the time on the podcast is it feels like it's going backwards, not least because of Trump, not least because some of the big leaders didn't go to COP and also because net zero is coming under pressure. I just wondered if you don't feel a greater responsibility to be a leading figure within that debate. Oh, there's a huge responsibility there. I mean, the climate crisis is an existential threat. There's also a nature crisis. We live in one of the most nature depleted countries of the world. And I often say to people, if we lose nature, that's gone. Nothing else matters. We're all dead and we're gone. COP, though, is more complicated. You're not found in the COP process. Well, I think if the COP process didn't exist, you'd have to create it. So we need a mechanism for people to come together. It's in the same way that I have criticism of the European Union. But I still think Brexit was fundamentally the most catastrophic decision this country's ever made both economically but also socially and culturally. And it's an imperfect organization. I think all of these things can be true at the same time. So I feel the same about COP. But also, so I went to COP 25 in Glasgow, because obviously it was just a train ride. There was one panel where I was asked to speak and they paused the panel to put an advert behind me, which was for an insurance company selling water security across some of the poorest nations on Earth. And I think it's undoubtedly true. I'd say the same thing about the Labour Government, by the way. Because it's been so corporate controlled, there's so much money invested in dresses now in that organization. There's no meaningful conversation happening in that space. That does not mean that you throw it out. And this is one of the biggest challenges I find about reform and forage, by the way, because people compare us in terms of the things that we talk about. And I think the comparisons are pretty ludicrous. But I think the biggest difference is he wants to destroy our institutions. He's delighted that the BBC is under fire right now. I think he'd be delighted if a House of Commons started to erode and we had different systems. I fundamentally believe in democratic institutions. I think the problem is, is the vested interests within those institutions mean they're not working for the people. They are working for the elites. By the way, that me and Nigel Farage talk about elites is very different. He literally is the elite. He's a former city trader who pretends to be a man of the people. But he's a man of the wealthy people. He calls himself a populist. Populism for me, in fact, the word populism means the 99% versus the 1%. He's literally representing the 1%. So in the same way Farage calls himself a patriot or Tommy Robinson calls himself a patriot. They're not patriots. There's nothing British about hating your neighbour or wanting to stoke division in this country or selling off our assets to foreign investors. Patriotism is caring about your community. Patriotism is about caring about the environment and wanting to protect it and not sell it off to fossil fuel giants. So the environment is a huge issue. And it's one that I take really seriously. And I think when inequality is so deep, you've got to meet people with their living standards with hood on the table, heat in their homes, which is all linked to the climate crisis. That's causing food insecurity. It's just not the first place you come from. The first place you come from is people are tired and exhausted. Their wages aren't going up. Food prices are going up. You are being screwed over to result of political choices. Let's make different choices. OK, Zach, we're all really quick breaking them back for more. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samorak here from The Rest Is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest Is Politics, when Rory was away. And I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, appeared with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now, we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy. When Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say, governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid 1970s. So in this series that's coming out on The Rest Is History, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Fatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life, even now, whether you love her or loath her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. And we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976, when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course, it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest Is History, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Revolut Business, the all-in-one business account to manage your finances. Our world runs on exchange, trade, tax tariffs, the quiet machinery that keeps everything moving. And everything is moving faster now. 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So Zach, I was talking to a small group of your supporters. You don't mean 'cause I've got a small group. No, I just haven't talked to a small group of people. I have. Who were anxious about being reassured about what you actually think about corporations, capitalism, money, they feel that you're going to right wing. And they feel that you're right wing. To right wing. And that you're not. I'm not that awful too. But sorry, I can't please finish by. Oh, racial, okay. So they feel they don't hear you talk enough about a radical redistribution. They don't feel that you talk enough about nationalization. They don't feel that you talk enough about completely rethinking the capitalist economy. Here and globally, that you're not talking about global social justice. What would you say? I'd say listen to me for more than 20 seconds because you're pretty much describing my entire political platform. I thought the question was going to come the other way that they felt like I was too radical left or something like that. I'm a socialist. I believe the Green Party is a socialist party. I don't put that label for an incentive because I think that means different things to different people. And I think can also put people off. And I think that's legitimate. So then I think the job is to say when you're talking about socialism, what are you talking about? Let's start with the water companies. We have water companies who are pumping sewage into our water and charging a zethrer for the privilege. Some of those water companies, their profit margins are bigger than Shell and St. Petersburg. They would say the water company stuff is too mainstream, right? Okay. Should we leave them? They can't set up the capitalist system in general. Companies in general, corporations. The capitalist system is exploitative, is extractative. It's poisoning our rivers to the water systems. It's also poisoning our minds. Some of the anti-migrant rhetoric that we've heard have all come from a government. They refuse to challenge, ultimately, and as billionaires, refuses to challenge these same corporations. And instead, it's picking on the people who have done the least to cause the crisis in one of the biggest acts of cowardice. And I really believe Shabbana Mahmoud's comments in recent weeks are vile in the disgusting. And I don't use those words lightly. I think the fact that It's not just migrants, people of colour in this country right now, tell me constantly that they feel like they don't belong, that there's a conversation happening that feels pretty insidious, that they feel like they're being demonised and marginalised. Don't just feel it, they literally are. International couple of structures, globalization? I mean, globalization is more complicated because there are benefits of globalization. We've just seen Mamdani elected in New York and I think there's this really exciting moment. My team, just this week, I have met some of his team to have a conversation about what does cross-sharing notes look like. I think the right have done that for a long time. Those links around frankly fascism, but you know, you know, you know. I don't think they mean sharing notes of Mamdani. They mean global capital structures. No, no, but my point is, we need socialist links. I say, another person I spoke to last week was Janice Farifakis looking at what does socialist internationalism look like? What does it look like when we dismantle these corporate structures? Which, you know, there's lots of criticisms of a wealth tax. One of the number one policies I'm calling for, they're absolute nonsense. People can't just move assets. It's not been proven not to work in other countries. We've got Norway, Spain, Switzerland somewhere with lots of wealthy people. One criticism though I do think is legitimate is that we need a global wealth tax. And ultimately, you don't create a global wealth tax unless you have global structures who will work together to make this happen. I think you can make that happen anyway. But come to the point of your question. Absolutely. We do need to dismantle the huge corporations. I mean, it's just obvious. Even as I'm saying it, it feels like what I'm saying is so bloody obvious. I say it all the time. It is global corporations that are destroying our planet that have bought off politicians like Donald Trump, who has no interest in anything but Donald Trump, his own vested interests and will protect his billionaire mates. And so I don't believe you can challenge anything sustainably either on the environment the planet or in equality unless you challenge wealth and power and definitely not calling you a liar, Rory. But I would say when you say that my supporters, I think that people who probably know less than 1% about me because I'm pretty sure anyone who's ever heard me speak or even watched me doing an interview would know that the politics I'm looking to do is a radical transformation of vehicle. I would imagine that there are people within the Green Party, perhaps in the more rural constituencies who are sort of, you know, perhaps, to the, to the, they would perhaps be to the right of you. Perhaps he has been, has been too left-wing. But just what, what does that, can I answer that though? Yeah, sure. Because I think a key point here is inequality hurts you wherever you live. Whether you live in the town, the city, village or a countryside. And then the countryside, like, I remember one time Jeremy Corbin was talking about a rural bus routes and he was kind of laughed at by much of a media as if this was a niche issue. When you go visit those market towns, which I do frequently, I used to say, you know, it's robust every few hours. They're like, are you joking? Every few days. And I'm like, if you can't get something as basic as a bus, that affects employment, but also arguably more important, that affects your family relationships or just people you want to go see and grab a bus with. So those rural green parties, when I talked to them at the moment, they say that there's not just double the people turning up to the local party meetings that are selected. It's sometimes triple or quadruple. There's a real surge of interest. Now I'm not complacent. Lots of people at local party meetings does not necessarily win you elections. And we know that. We've seen examples of that. But it doesn't hurt. OK. And I think there's a narrative sometimes though that my platform could put off rural communities, but actually evidence is showing over and over again that rural communities are saying we need to challenge wealth and power. And the farmers, by the way, the green party, the friends of the farmers, we cannot pit ourselves against the people who are crucially important for food security who understand the land. And yes, there are some farmers who have the same multimillionaires and billionaires we were just talking about. But 80% of farmers are tenant farmers. They're people who are also being screwed over by the supermarkets in the same power system where a renter can be screwed over by an unscrupulous landlord or a property developer. OK. OK. So we're speaking around the time of the budget. Say you were presenting the budget rather than Rachel Reeves, tell me how this wealth tax works. And whether you at least understand that there might be a risk given the system that we do have, which you're not going to change overnight, though there will be plenty of people who actually do contribute a lot of tax, do actually hire people, employ people, keep a local economy going. They decide, do you know what, last straw, wealth tax, they don't want us, they don't like us, we're off. Is that a problem or not? This is where we need to really differentiate between the small business workers, the small businesses, your hairdressers, your plumbers, who we absolutely need to protect their vital part of a thriving local economy and people who are earning. And in fact, they're not earning it. They're making more money in their sleep than any of us could earn. I shouldn't make presumptions about people's income or wealth. But I'm talking more generally. And because it's in assets, when people get incredibly wealthy, they put a lot of money into assets because they can't spend all that money even if they could take their assets elsewhere. Well, not if their assets such as buildings. And I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be truly wealthy because actually when people are living in poverty or they're just poor in a more general sense, they have to make decisions based on their finances because they're always having to think about it. When people are incredibly wealthy and they live in this country because they love this country, they love culture in this country, they love the, I was just going to say the food, I don't know if anyone that's truly loved the food in this country, they love the living where we live. We don't just move because of a small tax. And so let's go on to the wealth tax. It's a tax on assets, a 1% tax on assets of 10 million pounds or more, or a 2% tax on assets of a billion pounds or more. It's also important to say this is not the only measure. So we also need to bring capital gains tax in line with income tax. The reason why that's important. But what would that mean, raising capital gains tax, too? Well, at the moment, so Rachel Reeves raised it over last budget, but it's still the lowest in the G7. So you'd raise it to the top race of capital gains would be? I think that's exactly where we need to go to, to the same rate as income tax. Which is, well, it's 40% of a moment, isn't income tax. So it would be banded. But the reason why that's important. So somebody passing on their house would pay 40% of capital gains. Well, I think that's where you need to look at measures as well. This is all holistic. But the point of the principle is that if you're someone who is cleaning a building, you could be paying more tax than the person who owns that building, which comes to the next measure as well, which links to the last question you just asked me, national insurance on investment income. Because actually, again, a landlord who has paid off their mortgage can be paying less in tax than the renter who is renting off them. All of those things don't have to be that way. There are also political choices. Now to come to your question more widely, I think though, when you start to recognise, again, that a national economy is not like a household budget. You start to get to conversations about spending multipliers. Now all of this means is that every pound you spend on the economy, you're getting money back. So HMRC would be the first place to start because people go, "Well, wouldn't people just avoid tax?" And like, well, let's make sure we employ people to make sure they don't get away with the loopholes and everyone pays their fair share of tax. Also, the green economy, for every pound you spend on the environmental measures or on net zero, you get a pound 88 back. Interestingly, the one place this doesn't work is on defence. So every pound you spend on defence, you're actually getting less money back. We know we've spent 15 billion pounds on nuclear weapons and on Trident. And when there was a test last year, the weapon didn't even work. It just plopped into the sea. We also know that Donald Trump has the kill button on that weapon, so we don't even truly own it. So I think it's about fundamentally restructuring an economy where, yes, we worry about our national security. It's really important the country is defended, but we don't outsource that to Donald Trump. We work with our European neighbours instead. And more importantly, we actually spend money on healthcare. Again, education. You haven't told me what you would do, standing up at the dispatch box as a green party chancellor now. How would you create this entirely new system without unplugging yourself from Europe, which you believe in and support, and from a globally common which would be like it or no exists? Well, we have a sovereign currency in this country, so we can still work with Europe and we should rejoin the customs union immediately. It's absolutely outrageous that we're not, but we would still be in charge of our own finances. And so it's about investing in our communities. And it really is as simple as that. And that hasn't been done for a long time because of this metaphor that we have a budget deficit. But actually, when we're talking about a deficit, what we're really saying that is a deficit to the Bank of England is money in our public services. And actually, if we have a surplus, that's a deficit to our public services. And this can sound truly radical to someone if they've always kind of just heard the one idea of how our economy works. But actually, this came from Tatcher. It came from neoliberalism. And then the BBC, maybe a few years ago, started to challenge it. They started to say, let's have a conversation about deficits and debts and what they truly mean. And they were doing some pretty good work. And then they went very quiet. And then now they are absolutely reinforcing that old myth. And that myth is so broken. I had a debate earlier this week with Jeremy Hunt. And I was just really aware of like, we're just operating in a completely different paradigm frame. So the question. Hold on, the long paradigm frame. So let's say you're doing the budget. You're also doing a King's speech because you have to operate within the system that we have, okay? Sure. To change it. So, what's the legislation do you have to bring forward in a King's speech to meet? So, like we did the Bank of England independence in our first game speech. What's the scale of change that we're talking about and how do you bring that about? So, it's easy to say, well, we ought to win support for it. Yeah, yeah. But then you've got to make the change in legislation. For sure. And then you've got to. What are you going to legislate for? What are the specific changes you make to the way our economy is run, to the way our system works that will allow you then to say this is the world that we're trying to create? Now, it doesn't require a whole lot of legislation. We can get for legislation. The first thing we need to do is abolish these nonsense fiscal rules. The only fiscal rule we should have is the rate of inflation should be watched as much as you have physical resources in your space. So, that we can borrow more? Well, we don't even need to borrow more because we have a sovereign currency. So, ultimately, if we can print more. Well, you talk about printing more, but actually what we're saying there is investing more. So, creating the money that we're going to get back. It is a false economy to under-invest in our national house service because what we we do is we get sick population, which is exactly what we've had. We saw this during COVID, and I know today you've been discussing the COVID inquiry. We didn't put the measures in place, we didn't invest, and our economy has badly been hit as a result. Ultimately investing is bringing that money back into the economy. And the reason why this can sound controversial is because we have had politicians for decades now that have had a big systemic change of moving public money to private wealth, to come back to a question-mory, to fund corporations, and ultimately to say to their lucrative contracts. And people they know we saw this with the PPE scandal, but it's not just PPE, it's happening every day, it's happening with the hotels with migrants, where money is being put into private companies, rather than saying, what is the role of the state? We saw this with the Atley government, we saw this with this mass investment to actually go, let's have the state intervention here, where we actually care for people, we have compassion towards people, and government take responsibility for the lives of people, and by the way, that's brilliant for the economy every time that it's been done, it's great. And the last thing I'd say, because your question really about printing money, is we're really talking about debt to GDP ratio there. Japan has a 206, 70% debt to GDP ratio, they have significantly better living standards than we do. These are all awful measures. GDP, even the guy who designed the idea of GDP, says, this is a terrible way to measure the health of the economy. What's the central fundamental difference between Japanese debt and British debt? What is the fundamental difference? Well, the big point is that we have our own sovereign currency. The fundamental difference, so do the Japanese, but what's the fundamental difference between why Japan can do that and Britain can't? I'm waiting for you to tell me. But fundamentally, because the Japanese are borrowing from themselves, there's a huge amount of savings and investment remaining internal to Japanese markets. How much are we paying every year on debt interest? So here's the question, how much are we spending every year on debt? Well, we don't need to do we. How much are we spending? Boring from yourself. I'm just trying to work out how good you are on the numbers. How much are we spending every year on debt interest? Okay, so actually, of all people, Rich Tice has been saying the same thing. During COVID, we are going to go to the bank of England. You can't give me a rough figure on how much we're spending on debt interest. Well, there's 70 billion pounds that we owe to the bank of England, but we don't actually owe that money. You mean the debt or the deficit? The debt. Okay, the debt is much. The debt is much. The debt is much. The debt is much. Okay, we are spending 100 billion pounds annually on debt interest, right? That is debt interest. Is that the right way? Debt interest. Huge amount of money. Right. So one of the things I suppose I'm getting at is that what I'm getting straight back at you is we don't need to spend that money. So that money has been created as an idea. We're spending that money straight back to ourself. The reason I put the budget is that we do need to spend that money now because that is how we borrow the money from the markets to fund the things that we're funding. And so one of the reasons why, I know you're not happy with the sort of economic performance and the performance will generally have the labor government, but one of the reasons why they do have to be conscious of the market reaction to something like a budget is because if they get it wrong, the market is lose confidence and the cost of borrowing then go further and we end up spending even more. So that's why I keep saying how do you get to be? Well, and so now we're really going to a root of the question. I think it comes to all of what Rory was just saying because I think we're operating in different paradigms. I don't think the market should be dictating democratic decisions. I think the people we elect and government and fundamentally the public. That's what we make. If you get elected, if you get elected, you're one of the members of the House of Commons that can make these changes. What are the changes that you're going to have to make that actually take us out of that system? Because my sense is that it's a lot harder than you think. Oh, it's definitely, I mean, it's not harder than I think. I know it's hard. I know none of this is easy. But I didn't get into politics to do the easy things. What I would flip the question round because sometimes people have the tone of voice that sounds like, oh, you know, this is ludicrous and so radical. What's radical is what we've got right now, which is trickle down economics, which has been proven to fail. And over again. And so we need a different system. I'm not an economist. I'm not going to pretend to be an economist. What I am though is someone who listens to brilliant economists and a whole range of economists and listens to ideas from around the world. And what I know is that our system is broken. It's not working for anyone. It's working for multi-millionaires and billionaires who are telling the story about our system. It's fine. You told me that. 20 minutes ago that I wasn't radical enough. Tell us which economist you're listening to. Who are your intellectual influences here? Brilliant people. So Grace Blakely, Richard Murphy, who's been doing a lot of work on this. Gary Stevenson, who I know you've had on recently, James Medway or James Meadway. Lots of different economists though. I love the time it's just reading the stuff that they're talking about. And I think there's a, there is a consensus that the neoliberal model has broken and it's not working. It's consensus where from people like Gary Stevenson or where's the consensus? Where's the academic consensus here? I think the academic consensus is among economists who aren't working for the government. I think they're all looking at the idea that Gary Stevenson is a pseudo-economic economist or a. I don't mean a pseudo-economic, I think he's literally an economist such as Job. What about you, Manchuria? He's not his job. He's a city trader. He studied and undergraduate degree in economics. Right. Okay. He's not a professional economist. But I think if you do a degree in economics, it's fair to say you're an economist. Where are the people with graduate level degrees in economics that you're fixing on here? Where are the professors? Where are the people for whom this is their academic special? So this underlines some of our conversation too. We're not in government right now. When you're in government, you have an entire civil service to go, "Here are our principles. Here's how we get to exact questions that Alistair's fairly asking me about what does the legislation look like and how do you make this happen?" I think the point to do right now is to get the principles. Can I highlight something that I think is interesting? So I did a debate the other night with BBC. I came off stage and a woman came over to me and it's a story I'm hearing lots. It was lovely. She said, "My four kids are so happy with what you're saying. You're giving them hope again. They're feeling really excited." And I said to her, "That's your kids. What about you?" And she was like, "I think you're brilliant. I think you speak with compassion and values, but I'm not convinced yet that what you say is doable. And what I need to see is the practical shift of how to make those things happen." And it's a criticism or a challenge. I totally accept that absolutely needs to happen. People need to be able to ask questions and there's more and more detail about what happens. But that happens once you've established for principles. And I feel like this is what Gary was saying to you too. Once you've established the principle that there's deep inequality, that I love this is because multimillionaires and billionaires are holding wealth. Then what you do about it is an open question, but let's establish for principle first. My final sort of question is, what I feel is that story that you told about somebody who was Jewish and had done theatre performances about Israel and Palestine, suddenly having to be confronted with the reality of what was happening. From that moment where you sit down and you listen to Israeli soldiers talk about war crime, is the conversation you need to have with professional academic economists? You need to create that space. And I suspect just as you went from your 2015 Lib Dem belief in austerity, balancing the budgets to where you are now, which is the Gary Stevenson world. I think there's another journey of discovery here. I think there's a space of intellectual -so can I go for it? -It's not happening. Two responses. Okay. We can always discover more. I accept that challenge. I'm always happy to talk to people. But now, I'm then the Sandi member for the last five years. We have investigations pretty much every week where people come in, people you would describe as mainstream economists, and I listen to them. And then I challenge them. And then when I'm having those private conversations with them or even in public, I can hear they don't quite understand the paradigm shift I'm talking about because they've not discovered yet. So that's not me saying I hold the ultimate truth or you hold the ultimate truth. I think there's absolutely truth and we can always discover more about economics. What I am saying to you, though, Rory, is the frame that I think you have. Is the frame that we've seen for decades of neoliberalism or even capitalism that's whatever word you put on it. It is so fundamentally broken and destroyed and is getting worse. And it's time for us all to have a discovery a lot more quickly. -Something's that radical, though. I mean, so that, and you may be right. Look, I'm so radical. I think what's radical is to carry on as we are. It's crazy. Let me just say we can all feel huge problems in neoliberalism, huge problems in what's been delivered. But articulating what that alternative is. I'm announcing this getting at the slightly when he's talking about legislation. I'm getting it slightly when I'm talking about numbers. We're all getting it at it when we try to talk about countries that have tried to do it on the radical scale. It's nothing radical about Norway or Spain. Radical is Cuba, right? When we actually see people trying to fully challenge the full capitalist model, it's generally not going very well. Now that may be because there's a global conspiracy against Cuba, stopping them doing it, it may be that if you really want to make an argument that radical, you need to have the numbers, the academic economists, the arguments, the legislation, the package. Otherwise, we can all agree there's something wrong on the current system, but it's very difficult to believe you've got there. -Well, I've got one word for you. -Okay. -Investment. Let's talk about the cost of inaction. This is particularly prevalent in the climate crisis. People will say it's very, very expensive to spend on the climate crisis. Again, to the arguments we've had. It's a lot more expensive not to spend on the climate crisis. We've had reports after reports about the cost of inaction in terms of floods and wildfires. The beauty here is investing in the climate crisis. If we insulate every single home in Britain that needs it, that would reduce people's bills, vital in the cost of living crisis, would reduce emissions, vital in the climate crisis. Crucially, it could create hundreds of thousands of jobs that could be in the public sector, in trade unions, where people are being pay properly treated with dignity and care. The reason why I'm giving that example is you could say, what's that going to do to debt, what's that going to do to the deficit? All the legitimate questions. -How much is it going to cost? -The how much is it going to cost? There's a fine question, but the next question is, how much does it cost if we don't do it and actually investing in it is creating money? -I'm just talking about basic things. -The only way to I'm just talking about basic cleaning. But the only way to answer that, Zach, if you were Keynes, is by knowing how much it would cost, how much it would cost not to do it, and what's your projected rate of returners. And the problem is you assume that it's going to return. You don't actually have the numbers. You can't tell me how much it would cost. You can't tell me what the cost of an action would be, and you can't tell me the cost to return. This is just faith. Well, two things. So we're not in a general election. So I don't have a cost of manifesto in front of me, which I think you both agree is a perfectly reasonable assumption. Zach and though, what I can tell you is that investing in it is bringing money back. So it almost doesn't matter how much it costs. It's for fundamental. That you incentivize the goods. You disincentivize the bads. And that's for principle. Whereas at the moment, we have it the other way around. I went to Sheffield the other day. I got a train. It cost me nearly 200 pounds. If I'd flown, I obviously wasn't going to fly. But if I'd flown, it probably would have been much less. That's not natural order. That's because we are subsidising kerosene, the jet fuel, more than we subsidise train travel. And if you grill me on what those exact numbers are, no, you can't. I'm going on Laura Kuhnsberg on Sunday for the budget. But then I will have done the budget work and I'll be able to give you numbers. But I'm not coming on the podcast. Sure, really? I'll give you number. You've got to prepare for Laura Kuhnsberg. Well, because I know this is an, this is another green empty. And we get on the future as a podcast now. So I could give you the number right now about how much it's going to cost. And that would change in a month or two. My point is when I go on Sunday about this budget, I need to know the numbers because I'm going on a conversation on Sunday. I guess where this conversation is going in a sense is the sort of, and this is what politics is often about, is whether there's ever a gap between idealism and pragmatism, between really wanting big change and then knowing how you get it. So for example, when you were talking about the environment there and the climate crisis and the need for investment in that, Roy and I argue about this a lot because I actually think pragmatically and the idealistic. How is about to say that? It's a false binary. No, okay. But I think Ed Miliband is combining the two. You've got a lot of criticisms of Ed and what he's doing because he's not being, if you're like purely idealistic, he's not saying everything that you want has to be done in this way because he knows pragmatically is very, very difficult to get that within the system we've got. I know pragmatically if we don't tackle the climate crisis, we're all gone. So it's not good enough to get a gold star or do just enough. We've got to do what's necessary as a star and I'd like us to be genuine global leaders. So first of all, what are we doing? Air poll expansion. You can't say that there's a climate crisis at the same time they are expanding aviation. By the time this poll cast comes out, we'll have a decision on Rosebank. In fact, I can say this so you can have it in the bank. If they have refused, I'll explain Rosebank in a second. If they have refused to expand Rosebank or open it up, I will give total credit to the government that's for right decision. The Rosebank oil field will have the cumulative emissions of 28 of the poorest income countries altogether. They will say it is about jobs, but for the last 10 years, jobs have over halved in North Sea oil and gas. The jobs just aren't there. And actually we've taken most of the assets too. There isn't that much oil left. So always doing. Is it legitimate within the decision making process that are making now? Given they've got trade unions come into them saying jobs and given that they've got a local community that has been pretty prosperous for much of the last few decades and is now worrying about its future, is that at least a legitimate argument to make within the whole? No, because there's an ideal and pragmatic solution, which is to recognise that the fossil fuel subsidies were giving to those same organisations could be used in Caledonia, the Green MP for Bristol Central has a bill about this coming to talk about legislation, to use that money, to invest in training and the new jobs in green investment, renewable solar and wind. So I don't think there's anything ideal or pragmatic. In fact, the opposite of telling people everything's going to be okay and we saw this with the minds just pretending things are going to be fine and then shutting them down. I think we've got to be honest with people that we need the new jobs of the future, but you can't just announce them. You've got to work with the trade unions, the workers and say, look, this is a situation on the table. Be honest with people, treat them like adults and say, with this money, we want to co-design with you how we can train you, how we can make sure that you're in a job that feels purposeful and make sure that people have lives where they feel they're embedded in communities rather than having to work for petri-state countries or states. You mentioned Caledonia there who does have a seat. You don't have a seat. Presumably, you're going to be leading the party into the next general election. Presumably, you're going to try and get a seat. Yes, absolutely. And I'll just be interested in what you're thinking about is because you've got to try and think of a seat that you're going to win. What are the overall ambitions for the next election? What are you personally doing to try to get into the right place to ensure that you probably will be in Parliament? I would have had an answer a few weeks ago and more interestingly, I don't know what my answer is now, so I'll explore that. I would have said between 30 to 40 MPs and that was pretty ambitious to go from four MPs to 40 MPs. The great, the green party is shooting up in the polls, the rate of membership, the bi-elections we won one last night with a think a 19% swing up where Labour went down 19%. Somewhere like Wolfenstow, Stella Cries's seat, Greens went up, I think 18%. She went down 18%. There's very clear correlations here. I definitely want to run for a seat in London and that's just because there's a coherency about the fact that I'm a London Assembly member under proportional representation. So any Londoner, I'm already there, elected representative. So I'm going to tell the truth. I'm obviously looking at numbers and going, I want to make sure that it's a seat that feels right in terms of the story that I'm telling, but also there's 39 seats across England and Wales where Greens came second place. So those are the obvious places to start. It is interesting to note though that Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsey and two of our rural seats, they came forth from fifth place to come first place. In fact, Ellie Chowns had the biggest swing in the country. If you took Ellie Chowns' swing in North Harvature and put it on any seat in England and Wales, there's no seat where Green Party can't win. So what that tells me is if you have the right narrative for right candidate, because she's an excellent MP and the right resource thing. And resource thing is a real, real issue here. So when did you decide which London seat? So this weekend I'm going to something called path to parliament, which is where we have hundreds of people who are going to be the new generation of Green MPs and we've reached out to communities and I'm really excited that some of the future MPs might not even be members yet because they're people when I'm going to do outreach that we're selecting and then they become MPs because they got excited by the Green Party. So I'm not in any major hurry to do it because actually the message I want to send right now is the Green Party are growing and we want more people in. I don't want as necessarily to select from just for people we've got as brilliant as some of those people are. I want us to keep growing as a mass movement. Is there a part of your brain that's moving towards a rematch with Kierstammer? I mean, it would be tempting. Obviously things are more complicated than that seat for lots of various reasons, but yeah, it's definitely not off the table. Is there any part of you? I get you that Labour's not your tribe and is there any part of you that worries that Nigel Farage ends up as Prime Minister? Yes, you can say, I wish we did another voting system that we do, but we do have it. Ends up as Prime Minister because of the impact of your party upon Labour. So look, I'm a very smiley politician. I have lots of joy in life and I'm really, really enjoying the work I do. I think it's also important to point out the severity of this moment for so many people for working class communities, for minority communities, for trans communities, for the disabled community. Labour are handing this country on a plate to Nigel Farage. They are offering no alternative. And in fact, when Farage says jump, they're saying how high. And not only is this morally repugnant, particularly with their views towards the small boats of a moment and people seeking asylum, it's also politically incomprehensible. If people wanted low fat reform, they vote for Nigel Farage. You know, he's literally there, that full fat reform, sorry. Kirstaumer is offering low fat reform. He's offering no real alternative. And so I don't think the question to me is, are the Green Party going to split a vote? Or are we going to get him away with Kirstaumer? I think we're really going to the point where you could say to the Labour Party in Kirstaumer, why are you getting him away with the Green Party's hopeful alternative? But you just said that you have sort of the height of your ambitions might be 30 to 40 maybe a bit more, but that is nowhere near being able to form a government. So with that, and I'm sorry, this is the non PR system we live with it. And there is the possibility that that is what finally opens the door to Nigel Farage. Well, the prefix I give to this is let's have a PR system. If Kirstaumer was truly worried about this and then if he's going to keep saying, vote for Labour, we'll get Nigel Farage, we should turn to him more collectively we and say, we'll give us proportional representation and then people can have a vote that actually matters. That would be better for democracy. By answering your question within the framework, I don't think it's legitimate argument because Nigel Farage has shot through the polls with a politics of hate and despair. The Green Party is shooting through the polls right now with a politics of hope, with community and tangible policies to make a difference to people's lives. What is Labour Party's offer? What is for point of Kirstaumer at this point? It just seems to be to occupy number 10 as a holding ground for Nigel Farage. We don't need to wait till the next general election to have this debate. Let's have this debate with the country right now and I'm pretty sure the country will go. I'd rather be with the party that actually want to change people's lives for Green Party rather than be with the party that just wants to entertain Nigel Farage and be a version that's just sad about it but doing the tough choices. Why are they always tough choices for working class communities for disabled people when they're going to be tough choices for multimillionaires and billionaires? It's time to tax the rich. The final one for me, presumably the most likely scenario is we're going to end up with a Labour Green Coalition after the election. You're going to be going through again your full 2010 Lib Dem, 2015 Lib Dem experience. I think it depends on who the leader is by the way. I said it's possible but it does depend on the Lib Dem government that you wouldn't do with here. I think this is a man who ran on the co-tales of Jeremy Corbyn and then ditched every place you could. He's a man who's kept the two-child benefit cap, the disability cuts. He might not have kept the two-child benefit cap by the time we're talking hopefully. And also the genocide in Gaza, I think he's so deeply untrustworthy and so deeply lost for trust of the British public. I think we'll be incoherent to win seats. challenging him and then go and now I'm going to work with him. A future Labour leader though is not off the table because I would be foolish because I don't know who that future Labour leader is. - Very good. - Thank you, Zach, so much for your patience. - Thanks so much, I've really enjoyed it. - Lovely to see you. - Thank you. - It's been quite a bit, what was for Fragey? - Disgrubbly. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It was on the verge. - It's on the verge, man. - Thank you, thank you. - He was less harsh with you than he was with Michael Gover a few weeks ago. - I'll take that. - I have only less harsh than I was with Rachel Reeves. Thank you for coming. - Thank you, thank you again, thank you. So, Alistair, what do you think of your friend Zach Polansky, I suspect you're the first time I met him. - You're the first time I met him. So there was a sort of certain kind of brimance going on. I don't know if it's quite sympathetic. Is that because you're spending all your time hanging out with Grace and therefore you're increasingly getting your left wing as you get older, more and more green curious? - Well, he's definitely quite popular within the Campbell family at Watt Sam Group. Now, I think he's, look, he's interesting and he has without a doubt made an impact. - And what do you think about his manner and his sort of presentation? - You talk about bromance with somebody I've literally met for the first time, I think. He's smaller than I thought he was going to be. Now, I'm not saying that's important or not important, but he was interesting that he said, he felt I was an advantage to him because he comes across as being bigger on television. Look, he's very articulate. He's got a very nice manner about him, but I did think he was weak in two areas in particular. One was I don't think he, and maybe he's thinking, well, I'm not going to be primalist 'cause I don't need to have to do the same work other leaders have to do. But I didn't think he had a very good argument about how you actually get from A to B in terms of the change you make. What would a green party King speech look like? And I thought in relation to the economy, I didn't quite feel he had a grasp of some of the details he was talking about. - Well, I was completely stuck at it. I mean, I began by being very, very sympathetic towards him. The initial stuff was I thought lovely where he reflected on how he got things wrong and how his position had changed. Very moving his account of being Jewish and his instinctive defense of Israel and how that had been changed. And I loved that. These stories about how his position had changed on things and how he was honest about the fact he used to be a Lib Dem. And so I guess Lib Dem in the era of austerity and now a green party person. But I was horrified, horrified beyond belief on the economic stuff. It's not acceptable. Guys got almost 20% of the vote in some of these polls. He could be part of a coalition government. I mean, I stopped calling him out on things because it got so mad. But this is the dead person. - This is paying attention, right? He didn't know at all how much we're paying on debt in just 100 billion pounds a year with spending on debt. So twice as much as he spent on defense, he needs to know that. Number two, he doesn't know the difference in the debt and the deficit. Right, just to explain for most listeners, right? Just in case other people are not in so, am I being ruthless and having to explain this? I presume most of our listeners know, right? The debt is the total amount you borrowed. The deficit is the amount you're adding to it every year. Thinking that our debt is 70 billion, rather than our deficit, is underestimating the scale of our debt about 15 fold. And then he didn't know what the top rate of tax was. So, I mean, the fact that he's talking about changing taxes when he doesn't know the top rate of so, I didn't even call him out on that. He said it was 40% or rather 45%. Is it too much to ask that if you're proposing to be leader of a party? And he said to me after, so you were very unfair. I wasn't ready for those questions. I'm an actor and I can get up on those things. And if I had a bit more warning, for goodness sake, he's claiming to reshape our entire economy. He's got your entire family. What's that group going out there saying, let's vote green. I don't know what you're saying. You can't make assumptions about my family what's that group? And at least twice of these are quite like this. A tiny percent of British public, right? And his economic advisor is Janis Faroufakis. I mean, that was that. I thought. I mean, so I didn't want to be, I mean, obviously it got a bit scratchy there. And normally I reserve my scratchyness for the Michael Goves as well. But this is not good enough. This is not serious enough. If this is where British politics is going, no, no. Well, I think it'd be really interesting to hear what people think about this because I think they will agree that the first half was, he came out of a really interesting, articulate, quite inspiring in his own way. But I think once we got into detail, it was pretty weak. And I think both of us reached a point of thinking, well, there's no point going round and round. What do you mention Janis Faroufakis from Greece? I thought, are you really going to take the Greece left as your socialist economic model? I don't think that's very, very sensible. But I didn't realize you'd have that scratchy, strange afterwards because I think if you stand, no matter what level you're standing for, for election, you have to be able to answer pretty basic questions about economic management. By the way, you are probably the person that somebody had in mind yesterday who tweeted, all these, they actually told about lobby journalists, all these lobby journalists going wild. Yeah, I know you saw it because you commented on this. There was this very effective piece of communication by a young Labour MP called Gordon McKee where he was using biscuits, bourbons and custard creams to illustrate the death. To illustrate the death and the deficit. And to explain why Japan's debt is less problematic than Britain's debt and why it's ridiculous. Which is the point you'd made? Ridiculous to compare the 250% GDP to debt ratio in Japan to the UK situation because our debt interest rates are much higher and that's partly because of who owns that debt. Yeah, so Gordon McKee posted this video, and he got a lot of traction amongst the replies or somebody say, all these lobby journalists going wild for a little video by a Labour MP, the same people who criticized that Polanski for his colorful way of communicating about the economy. But you presumably would argue, Gordon McKee, good communication. I liked it. It was wonderful. It's exactly what I want in politics. It was funny. It was appealing, but it had an incredibly serious, quite complicated point to make about the debt, the deficit, debt to GDP ratios, which is relevant to the budget and what needs to be done. But I suppose if you were from the far left, you might say you would think that weren't you, because it was a relatively conventional economic analysis. Exactly. So what he, what is that Polanski saying? I guess he's much closer to the kind of Gary Stevens and view of the world that as centrist dads do not, just do not understand the scale of change that's needed an entire system that needs to change. Which is why I kept trying to push him on, well, you inherit the system that you've got and how are you going to change it? What are the laws you change? What are the more as you change? And the reason I've slightly cheekily pushing him on international capitalism and Cuba and all this kind of stuff is that to actually do what he's talking about, the full Gary Stevens and Janis Verifackers, let's challenge the entire capitalist system, let's put in wealth taxes, et cetera, you have to control your borders. Right, you have to start thinking about things like capital controls, otherwise you have enormous capital flight. And he's not being clear about the fact that you'd have to dismantle Britain's relationship to quite a lot of international economic structures if you wanted to go on the full left-wing radical Cuban vision of how to manage your economy. Maybe we're at that point in our politics where both Nigel Farage on the populist right and Plancky on the populist left. And essentially, he calls himself a populist and defines populism as the battle between the 1% and the 99%. I know that's not populism to me. Populism is Trump, populism is forage, populism is Johnson, it's exploiting problems rather than addressing them. So I think it's a danger for him to go down that track. But boy, he's going to be crossed with our summary. I can absolutely guarantee, once he's heard this summer, there is going to be a little video coming from Sapklajtsky saying particularly that I'm a real monster and a hypocrite. Yeah, but if he's got a sense, which I think he has got a sense, he'll go away and reflect on it and think, the next time I do an interview about the economy, I've got to have better answers. And that's what he should do. But anyway, I wonder if we're reaching that point now because the polls are where they are and the sense of labor being in real doldrums, et cetera. Whereas the scrutiny on forage and panansky in terms of policy, forage at the moment is happening in terms of his past and Nathan Gill and all that. But I wonder if the scrutiny on policy is finally going to crank up. Because that's what's been missing and that's what the populists always get away with. Very good. Well, thank you for that. And thank you, Zach, for coming on. It was brave. I really liked you on the first half, but something's going to happen on the economy. [BLANK_AUDIO]