“We really don’t want to see a split between the parliamentary Green Party and the extra-parliamentary Green Party, that would make no sense at all,” they added. “I don’t think anyone is really hoping that that’s the outcome of this. I’m pretty sure the party will pull together.”
What a difference a year makes
It was all very different just 12 months ago. Cheerful Greens quadrupled their number of MPs to four in the 2024 general election, their most successful result ever. “The mood is entirely jubilant,” Polanski told POLITICO at last fall’s party conference.
By this summer, the leadership contest had plunged the party into a bitter internal battle. Ramsay and Chowns — who snatched their seats from the right-wing Conservatives in 2024 — promised to use their platform at the heart of Westminster to further develop the voter base the Greens had started to build at that election.
Doubling down on a proven electoral strategy for clinching seats, the pair argued, was key to winning more. That strategy is “building on the lessons that we’ve learned in recent years about how to appeal to a wide enough range of the population of the voters in a given area so that we can win their trust and win their vote at election time,” Chowns said in an interview for an POLITICO’s Westminster Insider, ahead of Tuesday’s result.
Polanski — deputy leader since 2022 — instead promised a radical shift in how the party pitches for people’s votes in the first place.
He pledged to hammer the government on welfare cuts and its response to the war in Gaza. “My message to Labour is very clear,” he said. “We are not here to be disappointed by you. We are not here to be concerned by you. We’re here to replace you.”