#11- Eco Politics to Electoral Prostitution

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the Green Party was led by Caroline Lucas. You remember her. That slightly odd-looking figure who’d materialise on TV once every few years like a political cicada, whenever an election loomed and broadcasters felt morally obliged to let every party take a turn preening for the cameras. Yes, her.

She remains, incidentally, the only Green Party leader in the last twenty-odd years that anyone can vaguely recognise, recall, or distinguish from a strong gust of wind. And there’s a reason for that. Up until a few short weeks ago, the Green Party of England and Wales was about as relevant to British politics as a vegan option at a Texas barbecue, technically available, loudly advertised, and completely ignored by everyone actually eating.

Then came the arrival of Zack Polanski.

And suddenly the Greens stopped being an eccentric background noise and started sounding alarmingly like a fire alarm no one had tested before. With Polanski, without question the weirdest, strangest, and most dangerously self-important political charlatan to crawl into the spotlight in the last century, the political landscape of this once great country didn’t just shift. It lurched. Sideways. Into a ditch. At speed.

What had once been a harmless sideshow of recycled slogans and protest placards mutated overnight into something louder, angrier, and far more unhinged, a movement that went from “well-meaning but irrelevant” to “why is this person suddenly being taken seriously?” faster than anyone sensible saw coming.

And that, right there, is how British politics found itself sleepwalking from mild embarrassment straight into active concern.

For weeks, I’ve been happily patting myself on the head, dismissing his "manifesto" as the frantic, fever-dream scrawlings of a deranged narcissistic grifter. I honestly thought it was performance art. I mean, legalising heroin and crack? Abolishing the very concept of a landlord? Completely open borders? It’s the kind of political platform usually reserved for the bloke shouting at pigeons in the park. I figured he was just a boutique extremist shouting into the void for clicks.

Then came the Gorton and Denton by-election. And suddenly, the mask didn't just slip, it was incinerated.

Apparently, the Green Party has decided that "saving the planet" is a bit too much hard work, so they’ve pivoted to the far more sustainable industry of blatant, unashamed sectarianism. Watching them "court" the 52% Muslim population wasn't just cynical; it was a masterclass in electoral prostitution.

While the rest of us were perhaps worried about recycling bins and CO2 levels, the "Green" machine was busy flooding Manchester with leaflets in Urdu that read like a revolutionary pamphlet from a different continent. They didn't mention the environment once. Why bother with the ozone layer when you can just scream "Gaza!" and "Islamophobia!" until you’ve successfully radicalised a postcode?

They went full-tilt on Starmer for the "crime" of meeting Benjamin Netanyahu, because nothing says "local MP for Manchester" like a foreign policy obsession designed specifically to inflame religious tensions.

We’ve never seen anything like this in this country. It’s not "progressive" politics; it’s a calculated, "eco-populist" stitch-up. They’ve traded their sandals for a megaphone and their integrity for a sectarian voting bloc. It turns out the "Green" in their logo doesn't stand for the environment; it stands for the envy and division they’re so expertly harvesting.

And then we arrive at the Olympic-level irony, the kind that should come with a government health warning.

While Zack Polanski and the Green Party are busy courting, cosying up to, and high-fiving their way through the Muslim vote in the Manchester by-election, they are simultaneously pounding the table, megaphone in hand, as some of the loudest and most uncompromising cheerleaders for the Trans Rights movement.

Now then.Take your time.Have a little think.Because those two value systems don’t merely rub up against each other, they collide head-on like articulated lorries on the M62 in thick fog.

Square that circle if you can. I’ll wait.

In reality, this isn’t principled politics, it’s selective outrage with a vote-counting spreadsheet open on the desk. Everyone gets affirmed, everyone gets validated, and nobody asks the awkward questions because that would spoil the vibe. Ideological consistency? Don’t be ridiculous, there’s a by-election on.

And here’s the blunt truth.

If the UK political spectrum were a room, the Conservatives are guarding the door, Labour’s leadership are nervously rearranging the furniture, traditional Greens are arguing about the exact shade of green the recycling bins should be, and Polanski is pointing at the walls screaming that the entire building is an oppressive construct that needs demolishing.

He’s so far to the left he makes Jeremy Corbyn look like a guest speaker at the Institute of Directors.

But here’s the really dangerous part, and it isn’t actually the Green Party themselves.

It’s what I fully expect a Keir Starmer-led Labour government to do next.

Because Labour doesn’t confront pressure from the left, it absorbs it, sanitises it, rebrands it, and quietly moves its own red lines without ever admitting they existed in the first place. Today it’s Greens winning protest votes. Tomorrow it’s Labour “listening and learning”. Next week its policy shifts dressed up as compassion curtacy of the left wing manderins within the Civil Service, pragmatism, or “the grown-ups being back in charge”.

The Greens shout. Labour flinches. And the country drifts, not because anyone voted for it, but because nobody had the courage to say “this doesn’t actually make sense.”

But here’s the proper nightmare fuel.

We’ve got the May council elections looming, then a General Election lurking somewhere two-and-a-half to three years down the road, just enough time for panic, focus groups, and a complete abandonment of whatever principles were left unattended in a cupboard.

So, the obvious question is this: Is Keir Starmer now going to do what Labour always does when it smells a handful of votes drifting leftwards? Stick a finger in the air, squint at the polling, and lurch left like a shopping trolley with a broken wheel.

Are we about to watch Labour desperately chase wavering Green voters by out-Greening the Greens? More spending, more slogans, more moral panic, all delivered with that familiar expression of managerial concern, as if it’s all terribly sensible and absolutely unavoidable.

And then, brace yourself, comes the truly cursed thought.

A Labour / Green Party of England and Wales coalition.

Yes. That one.Just imagine it for a moment.

If you think things are bad now, picture a government held together by eco-socialists, protest politics, ideological purists, and a Labour leadership too spineless to say “no” to anything that trends on social media. It would be like giving the keys of the country to a committee whose only shared belief is that everything is a problem and no one is ever responsible.

Truly horrifying stuff. The political equivalent of being trapped in a lift with people arguing about capitalism while the cables snap.

Which is exactly why this matters.

When it comes to the next General Election, the only one that counts, and the job of removing this disastrous Labour leader and party from power, the parties on the right must, for once in its natural life, get their collective act together.

No circular firing squads. No purity tests.No sulking in corners because someone didn’t get their factional way.

Because nothing, absolutely nothing, matters more than dragging this country back from the political abyss it’s currently peering into like a curious toddler near a cliff edge.

Unity or oblivion. It really is that simple.