29: Zack Polanski is Here to Stay

As you can see from Dynas and Immigrate's negative polarization works. Yep. Please post this awful podcast everywhere. Welcome to this week's episode of Life of the Party, everything to do with new left parties, the green party, or whatever party we end up being a part of. I'm your host this week, Sheney Smith-Bean, and I'm here joined by my friends and comrades, Joe. Hello. And Jonas. What was it? So it's been a pretty eventful past two weeks in politics on the left, and also politics more broadly around the world. But we're going to be focusing today on events in the green party, from conference, designism, his racism motion, and other events that took place at conference, and also, of course, the by-election results in Hoban and St. Pancras. So, Jonas, you have been deep diving into what's been going on over the past couple of weeks. Tell us all about it. Yeah, thanks, Sheney. I should begin by saying I have a bit of a coarse voice, because yesterday I was out protesting with loads of French kids as part of the big social movement in France. And so, yeah, my voice has been better, it's in better days. But excuse me, guys, I just need to let you know that I'm a cultured activist, and I travel the world experiencing the social movements of my international peoples. Yeah, that's worse than me, Joe. That's worse than me, Joe. I'm not going to deny anything that Sheney's just said, especially because the weekend before me and her, you know, at least Joe had the excuse to be in a green pipe, a green pipe in the conference, but the weekend before me and Sheney's were just dilatants, traveling down to Brighton to do a French event. But yeah, I mean, on that, right? This is what we're here to talk about. I was there for about 24 hours. We did the French event. The vibe in Brighton was fantastic. So, surprisingly, like, it was great. People were buzzing for, you know, it's no secret. We've talked about it on the podcast. The Greens have been in a difficult period for the past three to four months. I fought the energy and excitement in Brighton last weekend. Was super impressive, given that. We did a live at the French event. And Joe talked about what it would take to make the Green Party an eco-socialist party. And there was just, the room was packed. There was so much engagement. There was so much interest. That's going to go out as an after hour as I, you know, I advise people to check that out. One of the big highlights, of course, which, because of the way that things have played out, hasn't really been seen as a highlight, was that Pelosi's conference speech. And I thought that Pelosi's conference speech was phenomenal. He kind of foregrounded it in three wings, if you like. Firstly, the affordability crisis, which he kind of talked about. The ways in which you would kind of push back against your affordability crisis and kind of, too, the big policy. And as Wednesday put, we're an emergency break and private rents for three years. And then a rent triple lock kind of inverted rent triple lock, where, which would prevent private rents rising above, whichever was lowest out of the consumer price, index measure of inflation, wage growth for, or 2% for three years. I thought they were really incredible. And another bit of the speech that he talked about from, which for me was really important, was a step actually into really thinking about what it would mean to the Greens to do a version of the majority in politics, was talking about a caring majority. So the kind of sections of the population, the working class population, who are involved ultimately in the reproduction of one another, of which there were a huge amount in the society. And I thought that was really important. And then the third element of course, which he talked about was people and planet the climate crisis, principally, as the kind of nexus that brings those two dimensions together. So that was fantastic. For things, for reasons we'll get into that wasn't really covered much in the mainstream press. There were a whole wave of motions that went into the conference that I'm sure we can talk about. There was motions on criminalization, motions on the NHS, motions on menstrual cycles, sick leave, but of course, the motion that was the talk of the town was designed as racism, motion. And when I said the talk of the town, I really mean it. Before I went to our fringe event on the Friday evening, I went down and had a pint on Brighton Pier, lovely, lovely trip by the sun and the seaside, further to Shanita's case. I walked past two different groups of green party members. The thing that they were talking about was the Zionism is racism, motion. So it was something that was really animating lots of informal discussion on the sidelines and around the conference. And I think that's worth saying. And of course, it was also animating a huge amount of conversation in the mainstream press. There was immediately a circus about this motion, which one of the things that I find really quite distinctly hilarious about this is it really has been the framing of the motion that has provoked the kind of eye of the establishment and so much of the discussion, rather than the actual content, which is hilarious, given that when you actually look into the content of the motion, and this is where I think the motion's strongest, it defends such things as the Palestinian right to resist. And it's just remarkable to me that the thing being discussed is the Zionism, the racism of Raymond and not, for example, Palestinian agency. Anyway, the motion won by about 200-ish votes among a relatively marginal selectorate of the membership. And I say that not as an insult. It is just the case in the greens that relatively strident but well-ordered as groups of people can get stuff passed. I mean, conversely, the motion that was also passed but is also a source of controversy in the green party, not to the same degree, was the nuclear power motion but the greens in the position of endorsement and support in nuclear power, which is quite the move away from the greens' historic position on the question. But it has been something that this group of people have been organized and fighting over for quite a long time. So there's a kind of question there about the future of democracy in the green party, whether it's durable, whether it's up to scratch. The backlash has been enormous. We have seen a group of Labour MPs talk about bringing the case, the equality and human rights commission. We have seen the German greens among other international green parties deriding their English and Welsh sister party. We've seen establishment big wins in the parties such as Adrian Ramsey using it as a wedgeshoot for differentiation, all senior figures and parliamentarians or almost all have distanced themselves from it somewhat. You could argue that's less so the case with Mothin Ali, I think that's probably right. But I also, until his act just released a statement after the whole Venezuelan kind of response by election, he had probably been the person that released distanced himself from it, actually. But even in the statement he put out after the whole Venezuelan conquest by election, he kind of reaffirmed the Zionism as racism in a different language. But then said he would have supported the amendment which argued for prioritizing Palestine, politics through the language of self-determination, rather than what he would see as a more prescriptive one-state solution. I'll be up at my cards on the table. I would have voted for this motion if it was on the conference floor. And now that it has passed, you know, I think we have little choice but to defend it, but it's certainly not the motion or the statement that I would have picked. One of the things that's really striking to me, particularly through the time that I was doing Palestine organized from 2023 onwards, particularly in response to the genocide, is that there were a number of different trends in the Palestine movement. You had a trend that, which I would heavily identify, we've had a kind of emancipatory locus that identified the Palestinian struggle as a freedom struggle and was very interested in mass mobilizations in kind of deeper organized and empowered buildings. Lots of the themes that we talk about in the podcast. But you also had a lot, that was a minoritarian trend. You also had a lot of other trends. You had a kind of more liberal, international trend in the movement, right? That would have been a massive contingent on some of those big demonstrations in London, for example, is fairly liberal. People who were disgusted by the genocide, you know, cleave to the UN and a whole number of international progressive institutions. You would have also, you did, I confronted this all the time, had a kind of individual moralistic category of people, people who don't necessarily have a structural analysis, people who aren't necessarily political to the end of the degree, people who were just really disgusted by the genocide, but also people who wanted to do everything to stop the genocide and wanted to throw their bodies on the kind of wheels of the deaf machine that was the Israeli military state. And you also had a mission shy away from this. It's a minoritarian stream, probably the most minoritarian stream. But you also had a deep vein of people who fought conspiratorial. You know, I encountered this when I was organized with Palestine as though that conspiratorial thinking about the powers that be, wasn't always anti-Semitic, but sometimes it did lend itself to anti-Semitism. And I think part of my issue with the motion, even at the content of the motion, broadly its sound, is that it lent itself far too much not to try and to build on the best bits of the palestantolularity movement. There was more emancipatory freedom trends and the language and the framing lended itself far too much to some of the more individualistic trends and then to, I think, some of the more conspiratorial, territorial trends. And I think you can see this in some of the kind of hatchet jobs who are really trying to route right on it online and denounce people who might have any disagreement with it online and people like Ben Timberley and David Miller and all of these sorts of cranks. And that's not, that's really not to put the movers of the motion in a similar box to those people, those two groups of people are worlds apart and that should be really clear. But it is to say that I think we could have had a motion that spoke much more to the emancipatory content of the palestantolularity movement than some of the weaker trends. I guess I'll move on and I'll speak, I'll speak about the Holbin and St Pympress by election. Zach lost by 4,000 votes. He got 33% of the vote in Holbin and St Pympress in a by-election. I'm sorry, but that's fucking impressive. That is incredibly impressive. His favorability ratings, not just nationally, they're in London, they're in the fucking mud. If you look at his personal favorability ratings, they are in the mud, right? The fact that he managed to, and the Greens managed to pull off such a tremendous vote in the Holbin and St Pympress constituency, it's just incredible. It's a historic labor constituency. It's been labor since the Second World War. He has faced conned in the press every day for the last six months. I would argue that the most probably didn't play significant a role in the final vote. I'll be interested to hear what you guys think, but I do think the fact that he's repeatedly demonised every day for the past six months, played a massive role. The fact that he has had a fraction of the Corbin treatment this year has meant that he has been completely demonised as a politician and I think that will have played a significant role. Rob Ford, the author of the Swingometer blog, argued that this by-election might backfire exactly that's key. I think that doesn't really hold weight with the test of time that claim. I don't think this is a kind of electoral vote where you get 33% of the vote. You lose by 4,000 votes in a historic labor constituency when odds are stacked against you. It's a kind of real political defeat or a case of backfire. I think this is a tremendous sign of advance. I'm not saying it's a sign of advance that is nationally generalisable necessarily, but I think this is a tremendous advance for the Greens. A tremendous sign of what's possible, whether this is enough evidence to say that the Greens are able to really slice through the burn and bounce, is a different question because there are lots of particularities about this, see exceptionally high shares of 20-somethings, single-person households, four-time students, graduates, middle-class professional, social renters, private renters, residents born abroad, exceptionally low numbers of car owners, homeowners, white people, older residents, working-class residents. So whether this is a generalisable case is a different question, but nonetheless, I think the Greens and that pelinsky should be, and that the left in London and Furferfield that mobilised for the Greens in this by-election should hold our heads up. I think the by-election result was outstanding, personally. You've got to remember that the context is it was almost a referendum on the Greens versus Andy Burnham's Labour Party, and we did say on this podcast before the Andy Burnham would be the guy that would give Labour its last breath, its last opportunity, its last chance to hold the barking Greens at the door at bay, and I think that's what we're seeing. You know, Segal is not terribly popular locally, she's very silent on Palestine, and in fact I think politically more aligned to Zionism than the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, and the Labour vote dropped significantly. And as you said, Jonas, you know, we're talking about a historic Labour seat in London, where Labour should be swimming comfortably and came dangerously close, 3,000 votes close to lose into the Green Party, who tripled their vote share in the area, despite the relentless attacks that Zak Polansky was facing. So I'm disappointed in, you know, to see the likes of Caroline Lucas publicly challenging Zak Polansky's leadership in this moment, because the result was tremendous, and not only should the Greens hold their heads high and be proud, as you said, Jonas, but actually I think there's an opportunity to build momentum from here, particularly in other seats around London. So what I'd say about, I think I completely agree with your take on the Zionism, is racism, motion, I think politically though there is an outstanding question, which is this big question of the state, right? And I kind of hinted at it on the last episode, but it's obvious to me that a Palestinian state, or at least an anti-Zionist state, would be better as part of the kind of national liberation struggle of Palestinians than any form of Zionist state. And, you know, that's clear. But we also know from previous national liberation struggles, two things. Number one, the kind of danger once you achieve your national liberation of that state, becoming subsumed into global imperial capitalism, whereby the actual oppression that ordinary people within that state experience doesn't instantly disappear in some cases compounds. And also the flattening of class antagonisms and how they express themselves through race and gender, you know, there is a fairly alive feminist movement, but at least feminist organizations within Palestine, but you wouldn't really know that because a lot of that kind of more internal antagonism kind of gets subsumed into the kind of broader national liberation project. And these questions don't disappear after Zionism ends, right? And I think it underscores for me this question of do we focus on a state or do we focus on what you said Jonas Freedoms? And that is, it is a minoritarian kind of position within the Palestinian liberation movement, but it for me underscores the critical reason why focusing on freedom is so crucial and focusing on rights and liberation outside of kind of national boundaries is so critical. Because like those questions of how free you are to kind of live thrive on your land, don't disappear at the end of like, you know, Zionism. And in fact, Keir Starmer supported the call for Palestinian state last year. And I think that underscores the ways in which capitalism and capitalists and the elites and bourgeoisie are able to kind of co-opt notions of nationhood in ways that they can't co-opt notions of freedom and full-throated liberation. And again, I think, you know, Oslo also underscores this. There is a small section of the Palestinian bourgeoisie who benefit deeply from the existing apartheid relationship with Israel. And that bourgeoisie doesn't disappear when Zionism disappears. And that bourgeoisie will still be in an antagonistic relationship with the Palestinian working class under a different kind of state arrangement under a non-Zionist state. And so for me, this is why, you know, as a Marxist, the question of freedom, the question of liberation, gender liberation, racial liberation, the question of class liberation is the lens to which I focus on as opposed to kind of which state, what kind of state, what kind of constitution. That said, obviously, as I've said in our three episodes, I think the motion was the right motion politically. I just think there are so many outstanding questions when we want to really zone in on what we mean by liberation. I, I'm going to talk about confidence in the motion because I, we're talking about too much at the same time. It's just too much that's happened over the last two weeks. I will say, I will say as a, a precursor to foreshadow later disagreement in the podcast that I disagree with you both in your take on the by-election. And it's interesting to be the green member who's not going to be the boosterist on the podcast, but I would, I would, I would take a slightly more pessimistic, not pessimistic. I'd say like a slightly more realistic like tone coming out of the by-election, but you know, we can, we can get to that. I think, I think on conference and the motion, conference as a whole, I was just very impressed. It was the first time we'd done a big professional conference in a proper conference center. That sounds stupid, but I do think if you're a party that's trying to run a government and transition to socialism, you should be able to run a decent conference that doesn't feel like it's just run by students or whatever. And it didn't, it didn't feel like that. It felt like a proper event, which I thought was really really good. I think a lot of the debates, even the Zionism's racism debate was incredibly good-natured. You know, people were very respectful, full towards each other. There was no heckling from the floor. And from either side, really, I think it was just really, really good. And you know, the thing that we need to try and maintain coming out of this is a sense of party unity and togetherness and people pulling in one direction. And I just, you know, I could, despite the kind of diverging political cultures and also political positions, I could see the possibility of that on the conference floor. So that, that made me very happy. I think the thing that I do feel coming out of this and I know some people in the green party don't agree with this or, or think this has been overblown. But I do think the democratic structures are basically fundamentally broken. Insofar as you have a lot of people sat in a room, just spending a lot of time debating things that are not that important. So, you know, I'm citing from a piece by me, Eilie wrote in the Tribune this week where he talked about, you know, the site of a thousand people solemnly voting on issues like whether the floor plans of ledger centers should be made available to the public. And you describe this as resembling a piece of surreal and strangely compelling performance art. And I can't help but disagree with him like I think that, you know, like I think that, I think this stuff can be for working groups, you know, this stuff can be for the people that really care about the ledger centers and they really, they really care about the specifics of it. And when you have thousands of green members together, you know, the one time your thousands of green members together every year we should talk about the really big, important, profound strategic issues, and it just doesn't seem like our democratic structures are enabling that at the moment. So that's not me calling for less democracy. It's calling me calling for streamlined, efficient democracy or something like that. Coming, coming on to Zionism is racist and look, my original objections to this motion still stand, I don't really disagree or have strong feelings on a lot of the politics. I think obviously the framing was used in the titling of the motion was used to attract negative attention and polarize. And in the words of one of the proponents of motion that I talked to sharp and the politics and sharp and the contradictions, like that there obviously was a sort of compact between I don't mean some form away, so please don't misquote me and tweet about it. But there was some form of compact between the proposes of the motion and the right wing press whether proposes of the motion knew that titling like this would get lots of negative attention, the attacks come, and then they take the line of, well, the attacks are coming, we knew this would happen now, you have to hold the line because that's what it means to be part of this political project. They're not the first people to do this at a conference for the Green Party, abolish landlords did a similar thing the year before, so this is a thing that's now recurring. And I don't think it's the best way to use conference, I think it's probably the inevitable way that conference is now going to be used, but I don't think it's the best way to be using conference. And in a broader sense, I just do fundamentally think that we need to be talking about more majoritarian issues that people care about in their day to day lives, such as the cost of rent and the cost of living. And I know this is boring and a bang on about this all the time, but Zach tried to do this in the campaign, Zach tried to talk about rent, a rent cap, climate affordability. I think I think war and anti-war will become a big one for us as well as defense spending starts to shoot up and we can link defense to what we can spend that money on at home and the affordability agenda, but these are the things that just like the majority of people within the coalition are trying to build care about in a deep way. And I don't buy, taking the biolaction in particular, I don't buy the designers as racism really, really hurt us in the biolaction, I may we'll get onto it in a minute, but I don't think there's actually lots and lots of evidence of tactical voting in the biolaction from the authorities, maybe some from the Lib Dems, I tried, I spoke to lots of people really trying to find some canvases who said that Zionism is racism came upon the doors and I could barely find any evidence of it and the people I was speaking to weren't back as of the motion so they would have been incentivized to find it and I really couldn't find it. So I'm not here saying oh my god Zionism is racism lost as the biolaction, I do not believe that, but what I think it has caused, it's caused a massive fucking argument and polarization around this position, lots of internal discord, which is never good for a party if you can avoid it, obviously you need to do the politics, but lots of internal discord and it's just going to be an argument that's going to go on and on and on and on and it's going to take up oxygen and it's going to take up air time so when Zach could be talking about other stuff and wants to talk about other stuff he's just going to end up talking about only Zionism is racism but the discord and the splits that that's caused within the party. So I think that's my frustration I think that I'm interested in building the Green Party not into like solely an anti-imperialist or solely a kind of pro-Palestine party, I'm interested in building it as an eco-socialist party and you know for me an eco-socialist party is one that is capable and able to transition the British state away from capitalism towards socialism within the ecological and environmental limits, part of that is anti-imperialism, of course, of course I'm not saying you could have an eco-socialist party without it being anti-imperialist, I mean just the you know like the global and imperial nature of climate change and its effects, speak to that like of course, but it is only a part of it, it is only a part of it. I got to disagree with you on one part there which is that. No, man, don't disagree with it. Zionism and racism and racism as a question is not a doorstep issue but Palestine is a doorstep issue and Palestine is a day-to-day issue and a bread and butter issue in this country and particularly in London and I think it's a mistake to contrast your bread and butter economic issues with your bread and butter imperialist issues as if the people that were trying to attract don't care equally or even sometimes more about Palestine than others. There are some bread and butter, I put that in quotation marks, economic issues that people care less about than Palestine and that bears out if we do what you like to do Joe which is look at kind of voter, vote up holes and all that sort of thing. Palestine always comes quite high and has done since 2023 the start of the genocide. I mean just on that, I mean just on that, like I'm not saying it's not there at all but just, I mean just looking at, so I'm taking Yugo's issue tracker right now and I'm just looking at 18 to 24 so this is like the core, you know, this is like the core of our coalition right and still the top issue is the economy which I'm you know I'm taking the economies of Cypher for cost to live in. Now I'm not saying we don't talk about Palestine, I think we should talk about Palestine. I want to talk about Palestine in ways that are material and grounded and I think talking about you know the defence companies that are still making components of F35s and sending them over and the fact that we haven't got an arms embargo in this country you know and the fact that we need to push for that and that is a big differential with Labour. That is the stuff that I want to talk about because it folds into a broader conversation around defence and the defence industry and how much money we put into that and we put money into bombs rather than welfare and you know building a productive and peaceful state. I just, that's the kind of stuff that I want to talk about and to be honest, if we talk about the symbolic, if we're going to talk about the symbolic, the most teemic symbolic thing with regards to Palestine, I think that resonates in the popular imaginary is where the people will call it a genocide or not you know and there is still a massive difference there because the Green Party are willing to call what's happened to genocide because it clearly is a genocide and the Labour Party are not and I just, I just get a bit frustrated when I feel like we have a leader in that plan ski who is kind of like very well attuned to the left wing popular you know I mean like he's, I think he's actually very good seeking out an understanding both like how to talk about issues in a popular way and how to find those issues that resonate and I feel like at the moment the activist base is basically making it quite hard for him. Making it quite hard for him to do that. I just think though these definitional approaches to the Palestinian liberation struggle whether it is we need to define this as a war crime, we need to define this as genocide, we need to define this as racism, skirt the fundamental issue which is imperialism and actually you know even the term genocide is a liberal legalistic term that kind of traps you at looking at the Palestinian liberation struggle within a particular lens, humanitarian lens mostly that doesn't shed light on the question of Western capitalism, oil, imperialism, class etc. So I don't even think necessarily kind of litigating is it or is it not a genocide it's helpful I think really shedding a light on how Palestinian oppression and exploitation is fundamental to Western capitalism and Western imperialism and therefore how that ties our government, our tax dollars, dollars, where am I? I literally in London, it's just like a go-to political term isn't it tax dollars but our tax pounds are tied up in Palestinian oppression and exploitation that is the most important question rather than how we define Zionism or how we define genocide or how we define a war crime and I think these kind of more linguistic, definitional ways of approaching the Palestinian struggle in Western countries, often comes within the context of our actual on the ground movement, doesn't feel as powerful and doesn't feel like it has as much momentum as we want it to. And so we get subsumed into the places where we feel we have power, which is in the attentional spaces, social media, in the national media, you know, how people are kind of mobilizing these quite aggressively. And we're kind of ignoring a more fundamental weakness of we just had a movement of hundreds of thousands of people for Palestinian liberation in this country. And we haven't necessarily built something long-lasting or even pulled on levers of power in a way that feels like it's bringing us much closer to ending the genocide or ending Zionism. Yeah, and this again, one of my problems with not just the motion, because I still don't get to hung up on the like specifics of the motion, but the kind of politics around the motion is that there's a I'd say a fundamental lack of ambition to it, you know, they get it came through in that, you know, it came through in I think one of the proponents was named an environmental article and they kind of said, you know, they kind of said, yeah, I'm fine with a green party that doesn't win up any MPs and only on 10 or 11 percent or whatever. I just I just think that was one expression of this and you write another expression of this is the attentional nature of the politics. It's the fact that the only thing that we can really fire over is getting attention on social media by causing a storm and polarization. It's this reduction of our politics to the discursive and the material and not actually materially trying to change stuff. It's very to be honest, very similar to the kind of radical liberal, you know, language policing of the 2010s and stuff. It's a retreat from the idea of state power. It's a retreat from the idea of materially changing a thing and actually it's not just a retreat from state power. So it's a retreat from, you know, the party going out and trying to do real stuff in communities as well because obviously there's there's many ways to materially change things and that's another way where the party can just start doing this stuff right now. So yeah, I'd really I'd really agree with that. I think I think one may be positive thing though because, you know, we've talked a lot about, we talked, I think we've talked a lot about the kind of like the politics and the political culture around the motion not being so good and, you know, obviously, I've quoted proponents of the motion on the podcast before who tweets things around kind of like holding the line and, you know, the same people who's talking about how anybody that earned on the motion or who said it was a distraction, like cannot be allowed back or there's no way back or something. So it's this idea that anyone that ever disagree with the motion is just like beyond the pale and not part of the coalition anymore. That kind of politics is obviously terrible and if that kind of culture takes hold on the party, then that's going to be an incredibly bad thing. I'd say I don't think that kind of culture is taking hold on the party and, you know, conference shows that because of just how how collegiate and good nature the disagreement was. And I think the thing that I was really cheered by was, I'm tribune, took two articles, one for one and against the motion after conference, one written by Greenfield Palestine one written that I already quoted by Barney Isley. And the Greenfield Palestine piece is very good. I mean, I disagree with its conclusions, but it was very good because it was written completely in a strategic rather than moralistic register, you know, it was I hadn't seen this from them before and I'll take I'll take one paragraph from it. It said, the Greens are no longer within touch and distance of overtaking Labour and monopolising the progressive vote are partly therefore risk diminishing its relevance if we respond to Labour's programme with a similar platform. We should not be offering burner, burnerism plus we should be presenting a radical alternative which draws clear dividing lines. Only then can we consolidate the support of the many people who have gravitated towards the Greens over the past year and who want something fundamentally different to the establishment consensus. I agree with that. I completely agree with that. I think the thing that I would add in is that we want a radical and popular alternative. And I think there are many radical things that we can say and go on that aren't mass and don't talk to people's immediate needs and that will be my criticism of the motion. But seeing them basically reason and argue in a strategic register rather than just saying it's the right thing to back this motion. If you don't back this motion, you're not pro-Palestinian. If you don't back this motion, you're in a, you know, an apologist for Zionism and or you're not holding the line like a cognate should. I think is a very positive development. I mean, there's a few things here. I think, actually, you know, I'm cautious and skeptical about how we box things apart. I mean, I thought that was the impressive thing about Zach's speech, right? Is it like what Zach was doing and his speech was trying to weave the cost of living crisis into the planetary crisis and then trying to project the material and politics out of it, right? And then for me, the kind of terms that I think we need to be clicking upon a lot more. And, you know, we have kind of resources to do this, right, in the campaign and infrastructures and different forms of social struggles and class struggles, whether it's the way in which pensions is tackled as a question by different groups of workers and its relationship to the Israeli state, whether it's all of the different investments and divestments. And I think there are ways of doing this, basically, that we have knowledge and resources of that we can draw upon that we should take seriously in how we frame the question of Palestine. But the one thing I would say for me is that on a lot of this conversation over the past few weeks has made me kind of return to the basics a little bit. And one of those basics is the debate that happens in the early 20th century between a guy called Vladimir, a woman called Rosa, Vladimir Lenin, oh, he's hilarious. And Vladimir Lenin, you know, he says, you know, they're arguing about what the approaches to national liberation struggles to freedom struggles from colonialism, right? And he's saying, my eye is focused on my boss was the Indian imperial court, right? He's in Russia, he's part of the Russian party, she's saying she's part of a Polish party, my eye is focused on the Polish national liberationists who are going to sell out the national liberation struggle, right? She's in Poland, that's the eye of her focus. They're arguing against each other, but actually there need to be no argument, frankly, because what they're doing in their particular context is the right thing, right? Both of those things are the right thing to do, right? Where they are. Right? Him being in the imperial court, her being in the colonial periphery. But, you know, we're in the imperial court, right? So we have to do much more of the Leninist impulse, right? Then the Luxembourg is impulse on this question. And I think that's really important because I think for me, that principle of self-determination, even though I'm a one-stater, remains really crucial because what it says to kind of pop on the back of what Shinesh was talking about with freedoms, right? Is which freedoms, right? Can you struggle for, argue for in a majoritarian fashion, push the case for amongst the broader population, wage leverage to win? Can you, can you win for for the right to return fundamentally? Let's say the right to return as an example, which freedoms can you push, which unlock the repressive kind of violently colonial impositions of the two status and the Oslo accord without thinking that we, Brits, have to determine what the terms of self-determination for the Palestinians are. I think that's a really important method, basically, that's been lost in a lot of this conversation. And, you know, obviously, there's a kind of broader question and there's a kind of rich Palestinian leftist tradition, a Marxist tradition, which talks about deliberation of Palestine, not simply on its own, but as part of a kind of broader sequence across the Arab world of revolts and rebellions, right? And I guess the attempt to pass it off the relatable opposition to the Oslo accord and to the two status from the kind of broader strategic sequence that has been identified and worked through in radical politics in the Arab world in Palestine and elsewhere over the course of the last 50, 60, 70, 80 years is a bit of a mistake, effectively. And one last thing I say is, well, sorry, two things. One is, I think, you know, whatever hiccups we may have about this motion, I do think, and I think it's something that, you know, I do think it symbols that there are bits of the greens pulling in different directions and, you know, you have a left, which is heterogeneous and obviously has different positions. It had different positions on this motion and its amendments, but then you also have a more establishment wing, people like Adrian Ramsey, for example, that I do think increasingly you're going to become a problem for the greens, and not just on the question of Palestine, but also on more radical policy ambitions, frankly, and strategic questions. And lastly, that's why I think it's so important when we have motions that we put forward to conferences, that we have some strategic outcomes that members can actually take up and that members can do. And I guess one of my issues with this motion ultimately is, if I was a green party, this is Palestine's policy, I'm not sure really what my activism and what my organising is meant to be from this motion, what I'm actually meant to do is an organiser, and that for me is a really fundamental issue when we pass policies. It's not just prescriptive policy that we need to pass. We also need to pass policy that activates people when to do this. Yeah, I really agree with that. And there are going to be people who hear me say this, who are going to be like, whoa. But when I was on strike, when I was on strike a few years ago, I was part of the radical wing of the union. And as part of the radical wing of the union, we pushed the strike and people's resilience for the strike to its limit. And it got to the point of the strike where we were like, this is either going to end OK or it's going to end disastrously. And we kept pushing and we kept pushing and we kept pushing. And we didn't know when to stop. Because in our heads, we want to beat the bosses. And so the way to beat the bosses is to keep pushing, regardless of actually how strong you are or where your people are at and how they're feeling, the radical thing to do is to keep pushing. And I think in retrospect that we should have stopped a bit earlier because the union was left weaker after the strike than it was before. And the reason I bring this up is because the green party, obviously with 200,000 new members in its ranks, there was always going to be a moment where there would be a big political issue that split that membership between its older and I don't mean older in terms of age, I mean older in terms of more established, more institutionalized members who perhaps have a bit more of a progressive environmentalist politics and the new kind of radical layer who are being brought in by Zach Polanski's politics and kind of agitation. And there was bound to, at some point, be a confrontation between those two cohorts. So I think the Zionism is racism motion has started that confrontation. And so there's a real question for those who back it, given the vote was relatively split, one comfortably, but it was just a fair chunk of people who voted against it unamended. There's going to be a question for how you don't leave the green party weaker in the wake of the kind of radical wave than it was previously. Because I do think it's quite reckless for people to be saying things like, oh, I don't care if the Greens kind of lose voters as a result of this. Like that might be a political gamble you're willing to make and it might be a political gamble that you choose to go down, but it shouldn't be something you don't care about. That's entirely kind of politically reckless. You've got to have a real sense of what your analysis is and why you're doing something and what you're hoping to achieve to want to throw away the kind of Greens' newfound voting share and newfound a kind of electoral popularity. But I think there is just a genuine question of how the leadership, how key figures within the party on the left of the party and Greens organize, don't allow the Green Party to fall apart as a result of this because you can see those tensions still building even after the motion has passed on social media, people go in at each other, people go in at different wings of the Green Party and it could become, I think even worse than what you said, Joe, not just the salience of the issue being high, but also the rupture that could come with that being quite high. And I don't ever think that that's a reason to not do something. I don't think that the possibility of that was ever a reason to not bring the motion, but I do think there's a political responsibility for people to really think how you bring the party together, not in a kind of wishy-washy "Oh, we need to all be friends," but actually you're trying to build a resilient vehicle that can challenge Andy Burnham and hopefully challenge the state, right? - And unity is just really powerful. It's why organizations like the PTP, the Belgian Workers Party just emphasise it over and over and over and over again, like external unity is incredibly powerful. If you're fighting amongst yourselves, how can you be trusted to run the state? The whole thing about like, you know, leftist can't even organize a piece up in a brewery, like it's a thing that we, unity is an incredibly powerful thing for us. We don't want the emphasis on unity to smother all political contradiction and difference. I agree, like the needs be political, can stay to contestation within the party, but we also need to work towards unity. And I think, I think one of the problems at the moment is that, I'd say a majority of the membership, are probably in a rough, a rough eco-populous to eco-socialist position where they want us to do radical things, but they also want us to get elected. I think a lot of those people will be very pro-zac and very pro-costal living affordability, anti-war agenda. And I think they kind of just weren't really organised and represented at conference, because Greens organised have taken a kind of soft approach to conference so far, although I think that's definitely going to change in the future. And we were polarised between, essentially, you know, the liberal progressive wing of the party, best represented by Caroline Lucas, and then, you know, the kind of like, radical pro-Palestine end of the party, represented by Greens of Palestine. And that was the, that was the polarization within the room. And I, you know, anecdotally, I was sat there with lots of people that didn't really know how to vote on the motion, because they weren't sure about it, but they didn't want to vote with the progressive wing, the liberal progressive wing of the party, who they didn't identify with. And it wasn't, I don't think, an emphatic, like everybody was always planning to vote this, they had the hands up. I also have to give the credit screens for Palestine, that's some brilliant speakers. You know, they had some really good speakers for the motion. I mean, the, you know, the, I think, 82-year-old holocaust survive, but 82-year-old Jewish holocaust survive was just incredibly moving, and it was a fantastic speech. The opponents of the motion did not speak very well. So yeah, I think it really is our job to organize better in the party, to bring these different wings together, to, you know, work with Greens of Palestine, the people that brought this motion, and see if we can work out our common agenda for the party, where people aren't at log-a-heads, you know, keep people like Caroline Lucas in the tent, maybe that's a controversial thing to say on the left of the party, I don't know, but I do not think we want Caroline Lucas to leave the party. I do think Caroline needs to stop publicly criticizing Zach. I think it's ridiculous, but she, I think it's ridiculous that she keeps doing that, and I think it's ridiculous on her own terms. If she wants to maintain-- It's a bit rude as well, just like-- Well, it's just rude and unreasonable, and I just think that if she wants to maintain power in the party on her own terms, she should stop going on newsnight and criticizing him. Like, that's not how you engender yourself to the membership. We need to remember what Kier Starmer did. Kier Starmer managed to splend Jeremy Corbyn after 2019, because he was incredibly loyal during the Jeremy who has never put her out of line, never said anything critical to Jeremy. And then when he was running in the 2019 leadership campaign, again, didn't criticize Jeremy. He just said that he'd do basically the same policy platform, but in a suit in a more respectable way. If I don't have no idea if there are actual leadership plans coming from the progressive wing of the party, but if there is going on the media and criticizing Zach, whilst he's still leader, is just not the way to do that. All I'm saying is I've had enough of being right and small in weak. I want to be right and strong and powerful. I want the left to be both correct and also not marginalized. I think that is a massive tension, because it is hard to be, to lead with both our best politics, our most radical politics, our most transformative politics, and also be mass. There is only small moments in history where we really get both things. But I don't think it's an aspiration that we should just dash. Yeah, for sure. And maybe to bring it back to the by-election, because I held my tongue on the by-election at the start of this conversation, but now I want to go in. I do agree with you guys. The insofar as the media setting it as a kind of expectation that Zach would win the seat. And if he didn't win the seat, he must resign. He's just nuts, and it's kind of wish-fulfillment from the press and the Guardian. Yeah, ridiculous. This has been Labour since it was formed. It had Frank Dobson, really popular Labour MP there for 32 years. They have estates in the constituency's name after Labour figures. They've got a Tessa Jowl blocking in a state. They've got Dobson Court on the border state. You know what I mean? It really is like a Labour assuring through C. By my calculations, it's probably about 50th. On the green target list. So it is not. It's not near the top. Yes, it is an urban constituency. Yes, there are lots of precarious people. There are students, there are young families. There are Muslims there. It's true. But there are also people with a ton of property well through a lot older, especially in the north of the constituency. And it's not. It's just not like an obvious one for us. That said, I wouldn't say so. I wouldn't be so strong about it being quite and quite like. What did you say? Did you say a stunning result? Or do I just have the words stunning in my head? I said the vote was tremendous. Tremendous. OK, so I wouldn't describe it as a tremendous vote. Now, you know, we got, there was a 22.3% change on our vote from 2024, which on the surface of it looks great. Obviously, that includes the 18.9% that Andrew Feinstein got as an independent. So if you put those together, we've had roughly like a 3% is point increase. I don't think it's quite fair. to put those together, because it is different running on an independent like Camden platform than it is running on a green platform. So I don't think all of those votes will have transferred. So I think it's worth saying that like our our swing is not 3%, it's probably I would say like 5, 6, 7%, something like that, but it's not the I think 17% that that we got in Gausson and Anton. And similarly, Labour's just held pretty firm drop by about three points. So for me, I'm taking this as like broadly, broadly in line with national polling at the moment. Yeah, I'm taking it in line with broadly, broadly in line with national polling at the moment. I'd say it's like a solid to good performance from the Green Party. I don't think this implies if they're you know if we had this kind of result in lots of other London seats, I don't think it would imply that we would win like a swath of other London seats right now. The thing is, I just don't think in general elections can be called under these circumstances. We have to remember that we are at the height of Andy Burnham's popularity. I mean, he's still like plus 10 or plus 11 points of favorability. And when this moment, which is almost like the opposite to the end days of Starmism, like if the end days of Starmism was it's kind of like weird period where all of politics was warped by his like wild and popularity. We're now in a moment where all of politics is warped by Burnham's wild popularity. And maybe I'm too much of a pessimist and Burnham just is a fundamentally popular politician who can style his way to 2029 without promising any fundamental change. But I just don't think that's true. And I think that the material conditions that gave rise to you know at first your party and the possibility of your party and now it's like plenty's green party. IE the fact that so many people feel like their lives are getting worse that we don't have a we don't have a future because of the climate crisis and things just not affordable. None of that's changed. Nothing Burnham is doing. Employees are going to try and change any of that. The budget is being framed as a hard choice as budget. It doesn't seem like we're going to get anything good out of that. You know, fuel prices are going to jump this winter. It's just really not clear to me that outside of this honeymoon labor are going to they're going to be able to maintain the poll ratings and the favorability ratings that they have at the moment. And it's very interesting. I was having a look at Chemie Badenock before this podcast. And I was having a look at Chemie Badenock because Chemie Badenock's favorability ratings are fascinating. They were minus 32 in September 2025 in the deep dark depths of September 2025, which sounds like ancient history, but is just one year ago. Now they're on, now they're minus one, you know, now they're minus one. And they've been inversely proportional to Farage here at that point in September 2023. He was minus three and now he's minus 27. I think that kind of tells us something about how politics are shaping up in this country. I think you have a left block and a right block where the leadership of the left block and the right block kind of yo-yo in comparison with each other. And I think some of the negative favorabilities that Zach has at the moment, it's not just about Zach in isolation. It's about how Zach people see Zach compared to Burnham. And it's almost like because Burnham is popular than Zach is unpopular and vice versa. And I just, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm maybe my Labour left comrades will be listening to this thinking, no, no, we can do it. But I just I just do not think Burnham's popularity and Labour's poll ratings will stay as they are. And that will only be to the benefit benefit of Zach Parnaski and the Greens. Yeah. And that's how he's setting it up, right? He's saying in the video that Zach released today, which is the day that the results came out. He said, we'll see. Andy Burnham's got a chance and we'll see. And that's how the video ends. So he's clearly and the Greens are clearly expecting that at some point soon, they're going to be able to say, told you. Andy Burnham is not the guy that you thought he was and that's going to be the line, the line that they go down. But look for me, Zach ran a good campaign. He went in front of community of local Jews and said, look, y'all are racist because you're Zionist. And he defended himself in the midst of relentless heckling and abuse. And the media have been trying for months to call the Green Party anti-Semitic. Trying for months to call Zach anti-Semitic. And last weekend, we just had that really big controversial Zionism is racism motion and he's not had the best past few months. And I don't think it's automatic that the people that loved Andrew Feinstein, who was a local character, would have just all naturally gone to the Greens. And the fact that many of them did isn't a result of actually the fact that the Greens are good. You know, I think that is a result of the Greens work that a lot of those votes transferred. And I don't think that was automatic. So for me, that's why I describe it as tremendous because, yes, would it have been great if he got 3,001 more votes and one? Yes. But had that kind of kind of vote been replicated elsewhere around the country, we're looking at the Greens being a significant parliamentary party. And I don't think we should sniff at that, particularly in the context that we're in. I just want to really add to the kind of burn and dimension of the conversation is that I broadly agree with what you have said. Well, I do think I do think it depends. One whether they're actually going to hold, I was having this conversation with a friend, one whether he's actually going to hold true to his statement a couple of weekends ago where he said we're going to knock the idea of an early general election on the head. I think that matters. But I think what matters in advance of that is whether they're actually deliver anything mean and form material on the cost of living crisis. Forget these, these promises of a nationalised social care service in the late 2030s now, the claim is if they actually, which Healey has come out and talked about some substantive support on energy bills, for example, talked about this a few days ago, beyond just the cuts the VAT that have already happened. That may be the difference to make them. Yeah, and it's a funny one, Andy Benham strategy in this regard because what he says rhetorically is one thing that we're going to have a 2029 election and he said that quite firmly in many different ways now. But his political strategy just does not point to that. His political strategy points to an early snap election because he's already in campaign mode. He's always promise, already promising what he's going to do after the next election and he doesn't seem to be willing to promise any change on the cost of living crisis in the interim. Now, I can't, I'm not saying that's what he's going to do. There are other very strong reasons why he won't do that because it looks like according to the polls, Labour will lose a bunch of seats and that'll be a bunch of people that he knows and a bunch of colleagues who won't be MPs anymore who will have a very heavy interest in them, not calling an early election. So I think he just took a little bit between a rock and a hard place in this regard and that's kind of why he ends up with an incoherent political strategy. But yeah, I think we always have to be cognizant of that. Just a couple of other things on the campaign. I think one other thing to remark on this campaign, which is just very very clear, is that the media and specifically the centre-left media, which is really important in a campaign where it's educated urban labour one, green two, centre-left media, notably the Guardian, decided very on that they wanted Labour to win. They just decided this very early on and this is not the moment about media coverage, but it's just, it's just a point out to it. And you can take, you can take a lot of examples from that, the fact that there may be Zionism, there's racism, such a big deal in the, in the runoff. But I think the most, the most marked for me is that I just did a bit of analysis on how many articles in the Guardian were written about the different by-election. So, Makerfield, Gordon and Denton, and Hobin and St. Pancras, before the vote, Makerfield had 110 articles about it. That was when Burnham was running against, Burnham was running against reform. Gordon and Denton, they had 57, Hobin and St. Pancras, they had 26, 26, so less than a quarter of the coverage that they gave to Makerfield, they gave in Hobin and St. Pancras. And their excuse would be, wow, you know, the person running wasn't going to be Prime Minister, they're excuse probably, is that they're at the party conferences too, but it's just very much the case that I think, I think they decided to just starve the by-election of Oxygen, because they saw that, because they saw that as strategic, which I find deeply frustrating, because there are just a lot of people at the Guardian that want, want Labour to do some good cost of living and climate stuff, and I wish they'd get into that head of the only way that they're going to get that is if they have a strong green party to the left of Labour. The only reason Labour's moved is because there is leverage outside of the party, but anyway, there's that, I think the second thing is that some people this morning are talking about anti-Zach and anti-Green tactical voting, so conservatives and the Dems starting to coalesce around Labour as a tactical vote. And I can't see much of that in the result. I mean, obviously, you can't see individual vote transfers, but the Tory vote held up really well. The Liberal Democrat vote dropped a bit, dropped a bit. And there are, you know, there are some implications from national polling that, you know, if conservatives support the Liberal Democrat supporters were in a Labour versus Green seat, 20% of the Tory votes were vote Labour, 10% were vote Green, 40% of the Liberal Democrats were vote Labour, 30% Green, so there's some evidence for, like, it's soft tactical voting, but nothing like they're kind of like wild and completely non-tribal and not giving a shit about party labels tactical voting that happens on the left against reform. There's just there's just nothing like that. So when people are trying to say that the green bound is toxified or that plant is toxified or whatever, I just don't I just don't see I just don't see the evidence for that. And then a final thing and I will caveat this with I've heard like different reports, but it does it does seem like the campaign itself had a certain level of disorganization. I don't know whether it's because the staff team are just completely burnt out because they've gone from wanting to another. I don't know whether it's because Camden the Camden party is relatively disorganized, which it is. But you know there were just lots of lots of examples of people having to wait a long time to get on the doors and canvas. I still think there's a massive question around where Zach's social media game and video is one that I just don't I just I mean his response to this is that we were spending all of our time on the doors and election expenses. But I just feel like there must have been some way to do some good viral social media is should some social media videos which never happened which would one of the hallmarks of Zach's early leadership and which really really need to come back. See I'm not saying that the campaign would have reversed the result. I think with the gap it would have probably made it just a closer result. But I think I think some internal lessons need to be learned about the campaign probably. All right so flowing from that Joe you've got a hot take about Zach Plansky and his future leadership of the Green Party. So go for it. Yeah I mean this is probably not that hot and we thought maybe it would be hot. But I just I just I think both Zach is going to be leader of the party for as long as he wants or at least for the foreseeable future. I also think that he's the leader of the party that we need right now and I don't think there's going to be a viable challenge next year. So the context of this is that there will be a leadership election next year because it's the Green Party so obviously we're going to have elections for every thing all the time. There will be a leadership election next year and you know there's a bit there was some murmurings in political around conference about how Mothin Ali was supposedly putting together a bid. I have no suggestion that that comes from his people by the way that could just be from that could just be from hostile people. Briefing that obviously Caroline Lucas said on News Night asked when asked about Zach's leadership said well we'll just have to see what happens in the coming days and weeks. So there's this kind of noise around the idea that Zach's you know going to be challenged and that the be a viable challenger and you know Zach may well be challenged because it's the Green Party you know like someone that wants to raise their profile might run against them like that won't even be seen as a particularly controversial thing to do in the party because it's a you know it's a democratic party and these things are open and stuff but the idea that Zach won't win a leadership election with North Korea levels of votes next year I think is absolutely for the birds and I think there's a couple of reasons. Number one I think Zach is basically a unifying figure in the party now like I think you have you know you have the Greens of Palestine wing who are more radical on Palestine potentially most prominently represented by Mothin Ali and then you also have the progressive liberal wing most prominently represented by Caroline and Rachel Millwood and Zach is actually a unifying figure. We have to remember that 80% of the membership joined after Zach became leader they're going to have some positive affiliation with him he's by far and away the highest profile and I just I just don't I just don't see him either losing a leadership election next year nor having a kind of significant or reasonable challenge to him and I think this is a really good thing. I think this is a really really good thing I think that Zach has to be honest some fantastic qualities you know like he's level of energy and his ability to keep going is something that you need in a politics that is frankly exhausting these days like frankly exhausting to be a purely be a political actor and be a political animal he is fantastic on the media still he's really able to operate in those very hostile environments in a way that unfortunately previously is the Green Party such as Natalie Bennett who is a former left wing leader of the Green Party was not so good and it really is the thing that you have one or two slip ups and they can just completely mind you you know and I think coming back to this favorability ratings again because I think some people even on the left sometimes have misgivings and they say well you know look at Zach's favorabilities and his overall favorabilities have dropped and it's true but I think there's there's new ones to this I think one new ones is the fact that at least some of the unfavorabilities that he has some of the high levels of unfavorability ratings come from people who are never going to vote for the Green Party finding out who Zach is and then realizing that they don't like him because you know like unfavorability ratings and net so you have the people that back you the people that don't back you and the don't know and then the don't know is discounted and when you start off as a new political leader there's a high level of people who don't know and don't know it even means that they haven't made up their mind about you or they just haven't heard of you and obviously as time goes on more people hear about you and then more people form an opinion of you and there are just you know there's a large number of people who are never going to like Zach Polansky when I talk about building majoritarian project these days a majoritarian project and our multi party politics means 30 percent so that means maybe if you're doing really well 30 percent of the people that really like you and back you 20 or 30 percent who wouldn't vote for you but like don't completely hate you and then maybe 30 or 40 percent of people that do hate your guts but you don't need to win them over because they are opponents so there are always going to be these people this idea that we're looking for some state like politician that can just transcend all of these political boundaries in a highly polarized environment is just absurd it's not then that's not the entire loss of favorability you know like there was a there was a peak roughly in April of this year that we've come down from and that is in part because of some mistakes the tax made it's also because of the attacks that have piled upon him so it's not all of it but I that is some of it but I think the second wrinkle that's just really important is that in our incredibly volatile political situation where people seemingly just don't have allegiances to political parties in the same way anymore you know people can come back from the brink and you know I really want to study chemi bad enough if anyone if anyone wants to you know do some like deep research and some strategic analysis what chemi bad enough's done over the last year be really interested to read it because as I said earlier she's come back from minus 32 percent in 20 september 25 to minus 1 now this is inversely inversely proportional with RRJ's ratings she's come back from a lower base than Zach's out now I have confidence that Zach could try to do the same thing so yeah I just don't I just don't think I just don't think Zach is gonna have a viable leadership challenge I think he is the leader that we need now 100 percent and I even think a weak leadership challenge to him next year could be very beneficial for him because it could it could almost give him it could reaffirm his support within the party so it puts the bed the idea that oh maybe he's not the right leader and also it gives him the opportunity almost to present you know phase two over the project phase two of like what we're doing you know thanks for that joe all I have to say on this is leave Zach alone Zach is a green cuddly bear and leave him alone he's doing a good job for a new leader he's had some wobbles I've had some moments where I'm like for example on the goldous green stuff and how he responded to the police where I'm like nope don't back that but he's not done anything so catastrophic that you're like thinking that this is a guy that can't withstand the pressure or this is a guy that can't make decent decisions my one thing I think Zach needs to think about is he often feels sometimes a little bit ideologically rootless so it sometimes feels that he doesn't know what he thinks about some topics or issues and he's taking advice from lots of different people and you can see the nuances and the shape of his like views on some things changing in ways that for me don't always give off ideological confidence so for example around Zionism is racism you can see how his position has developed over time and I don't think it's a bad thing for a leader's position to develop and to change in light of conversations with your members and things like that but I just think he needs to be more grounded in what he thinks not necessarily in the advice that he's taking from people about what is the right way to reactively respond to a particular attentional moment that's my only critique otherwise leave Azakalon Caroline back off leave Azak it's worth saying I just just on the Caroline thing really quickly I think Caroline saying that I'm using that kind of betrays that she's not part of some plot to take down Zach I think if she was part of some plot to take down Zach she wouldn't be voicing exasperation like that on the news I think yeah I think it is to be sympathetic I think it is genuinely just kind of like frustration with the way things have gone from her rather than some macchi valley and plot yeah she's huffing and puffing because she probably feels powerless but she needs to she needs to bounce step Caroline Yeah, this is a, this is a cold take I reckon because we all, we all fucking agree. I mean fundamentally for me, there's just nobody, there's nobody waiting in the wings that could seriously replace that balanskyism as a compelling leader of the Green Party. That's, to me that's the fundamental question and obviously that's a, that's a problem, it's a problem that you are uniquely aware of Joe and you know there's this challenge of how do the Green build up a layer of people across the party who can take on leadership roles, who can fight the attention economy, who can politically lead, who can provide political authority, and can provide a compelling horizon and visions that animates people and mobilises people. But you know, it's been 12 months now, it's a mass party, 200,000 odd members, it's got more parliamentary representation, it's got more council representation, the politics of the project have, have, of the party because of the balansky project, let me clarify that, have radicalized somewhat and it's a, it's a serious, it's a serious contender in British politics. I just think if you would ask anyone on the Green Left 18 months ago, if they could have the situation that they had now, they would have beaten your fucking hand off effectively. And I think for me, like one of the things that is really, even, you know, during this kind of moment of reorientation on the face of burn, and one of the things that has warned me to zapalansky even more, you know, there are little things that aren't so little, like when he, you know, election needs, when he goes to meetings and he declares himself an anti-sianist in front of a group of mostly reactionary Jewish community leaders, that stuff obviously warns me to him, it's an incredibly grave political act. But I think also for me, like it's the elaboration of the kind of political vision and horizon that seems to be emerging, which I kind of talked about in this conference speech, and I think part of the kind of twofold crucial aspects of the Greens going forward is what, what is that concretely going to be, that kind of vision and horizon of starting to be elaborated? What is that in a mean in policy terms? And how would that differentiate from the kind of reindustrializing the stout, your abandoned Burnham? That's going to be really important. But then also I think, you know, how are you going to mobilize people's capacities and agencies to fight for that and organizing around that in the here and now, beyond just electoral politics? And I think both of those things are going to be really important. And you know, I'm not a green party member, but, you know, you could take some assurances from the fact I think that there are significant parts of the party that are thinking on those terms, organisations like Greens, organised, the obvious example, but there are others too. So yeah, I'm back in Zack for now, I guess, yeah, it's great. And what, Jonas, that just reminded me of like what we loved about Zack, and we were early Zack backers, I don't care what everyone says, I'm sorry. That's right. We were early Zack backers, I'm still a Zack backer. That's right. What felt so delicious about his early tenure and his early campaign was it felt like I can see that he wants to take me somewhere, somewhere nice, somewhere that I want to be. And I think in the reactivity of the politics that he's been swept up in, that has been lost. I want the Zack back where he's telling me about the world that I want to live in, the people I want to hang out with, how I want to spend my time, you know, I want the Zack that was pointing me towards what my life can look like in a world that was built around enabling ordinary working class people to live good lives. I don't just want the Zack that's trying to defend himself or defend the party against antisemitism accusations or the next drama or the next crisis, we need that visionary Zack back. I think yeah, that's another thing that I would say he really needs to focus back on. And I think what you said, Joe, about the social media videos, I think maybe that's what you're capturing. It's not necessarily that we need the videos themselves back. It's that the videos were a conduit to this powerful message and this powerful vision. And that's what we need back. And a message in a vision that really transcends politics in many ways and speaks to the like the spirit in like a deeply meaningful way like that, that's the stuff that that's the stuff that I want to see from him. And, you know, I think in part it's our responsibilities, the membership to actually help him do that. I don't, I don't think, I don't think like naming motions incredibly controversially and thus eating up all of the green party air time with issues that he doesn't want to be talking about in ways that are defensive and not visionary. I think that I think that's one part of our responsibility, but also to, you know, to get on the kind of like criticism of not criticism of that train, but like what could, what could exactly be better next? I agree with you guys. I think more ideological breadth and ground and this would be really important. I always think of it in terms of a program, so coming up with some kind of program which shows that we're really serious about the horizon. We're really serious about eco-socialism. I'm serious about what it's going to mean, it's transition from, you know, capitalism to eco-socialism in Britain and we can take massive inspiration from the foreign sense of me as I know we talked about this before, but they wrote a program which is this big collective project of the party and lots of people across society and lots of groups released it, became a bestseller, you know, became a bestseller. And I think it is, it is the case that there's just, there is no compelling vision for society at the moment being offered by any of the parties, really, there's no compelling vision. So like, can we, can we do that? And if we can do that, then I think we'll make the project less dependent on, you know, like Zach is an individual and how he's going to react in a moment because there'll be this broader thing backing him, which is a program that we've all come up with, that we've all come up with together. And I guess my final point will be that, yeah, I don't know, I don't know what I think about that actually, Sheney, so the thing that you said about how it's difficult for him to work out is positioning public sometimes, because I know what you mean, you kind of want a certain steadfastness, and you don't want things to seemingly just change in reaction. But then I also think to say, Jean-Luc Melachon, who I think is a, like as an orator and a political figure, we often look to and think, wow, this guy's amazing and the way he talks about how life could be and, you know, the politics of free time and all this kind of stuff. But he, Melachon did, if years ago, do a complete 180 with regards to secularism, Islam, Lissate in France, but he basically decided that he was wrong about everything he said about, you know, Berkeren, the Nick Haban, and he was totally wrong about how he was approaching French Muslims and he was wrong about all of those issues. Did he, you know, was he pressured by a younger leftist in his party, it's changed his position, yeah, probably, did he see the electoral efficacy of doing so, yeah, I think so too. But he, he did just do a complete 180 on that stuff and it seems to have been to his benefit. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I am a real big believer in not being belligerent in politics. It's how I really try to live my life, you know, I try to take on feedback, I try to shift my position if there's better evidence. I don't think there's something wrong with him changing his position. But I think it often feels like he's working things out for the first time. Oftentimes in moments of reaction. And while I don't think there's an issue with him kind of flexing and changing his position when he gets feedback, when there's, you know, pressure coming from the membership, et cetera, I do think it is incumbent on a leader to give the vibe of being able to lead, right? I'd be able to say, this is what I think, and this is why I think you should think it too. And I just feel his vibe at the moment feels a bit under confident, which is also why, you know, I think you're wrong on the, it's being, you know, the membership should sometimes think about how it positions things in order to support Zach. Actually, I think it's Zach's responsibility to be able to see where the membership is at and respond to it in a way that takes people with him. So for example, around Zionism as racism, wouldn't it have been amazing if he did a video that said, I want there to be a world where Palestinians can walk freely from the river to the sea, where there aren't checkpoints that people have to go to, to, to be able to go to work, where young girls who are Jewish and young girls who are Palestinian can play together in playgrounds that aren't segregated by race, that would have been the work of a confident leader, right? It wouldn't necessarily have meant that he would have had to run off whole sections of the party, but that would have been someone who was leading with confidence, and I think that's the bit that's missing for me. But I love Zach, come on, Zach, we got you, you can do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've no, I really, I really agree with, I really agree with that. And I think, I think maybe the change is for Zach to see, I don't know, like the more bureaucratic instinct to me want to say the words party management, but I know that's like an awful way of putting it, but like, like seeing internal party matters and trying to lead the members and be with the members in various ways is, like I think you need to see that as part of his job, because I'm not sure he has seen that as part of his job up until now. I think you can completely write if he'd have led on the dinism as racism motion and the issue internally, he could have gotten the outcome that he he wanted on the motion, whatever that outcome might have been. So thanks, comrades, for a rich and supple conversation as always, um, it's ever the troll. I love you, Jonas. And I love you, Joe. That was a fantastic conversation, I always love, I always love chatting to you guys. It's a highlight of, of my week, even though this podcast does a lot of work, it's always a highlight to chat to you. So what? What? What is it? It's the research I have to do. This is an ampersounds production.