What does it mean for the fight against cuts, ‘Your Party’ and May’s local elections?

Editorial of the Socialist 1335

Zack Polanski has won the Green Party leadership race as a self-described eco-populist calling nationalisation a “no-brainer” and to tax the millionaires and billionaires – as he puts it, the “policies of the 99%”.

His victory is a reflection of the huge appetite that exists for a left-wing alternative to the capitalist establishment parties.

The margin of victory was huge: 85% to 15% for his opponents’ joint ticket of incumbent Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns.

The Green Party’s own figures reveal its membership reaching a new peak at 68,500, surpassing the previous peak of 63,219, just before Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015 deflated a previous ‘Green Surge’.

Since Polanski’s announcement of his standing in March, 8,500 have joined the party. The vast majority will have done so to vote for him. However, to put these numbers into perspective, since July nearly 100 times as many, over 800,000, have signed up to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ announcement of their intention to launch a new party.

This in itself shows that for the big majority of the working class and young people the Greens are not seen as ‘their party’.  And rightly so. The Greens are not a party rooted in or emanating from the workers’ movement. A trade union affiliating to them, for example, would nave no means to use its collective voice in the party’s democratic structures, or to hold its leaders to account. The party also – consciously – does not have a socialist ideology, a vision of an alternative system to capitalism, leaving their elected representatives with no anchor to resist the pressures of the capitalist establishment.

There are important lessons for the founding of ‘Your Party’ in this. It should boldly present itself as socialist and as fighting in the interests of the working-class, and ensure it has a democratic structure with the organised workers’ movement playing a central role.

May elections

An immediate first test will be the May 2026 elections, in which all seats will be up for election in London borough councils for example, presenting a real opportunity for a new party to get councillors elected. Even for it to win the leadership of councils.

By adopting the policy agreed by the biggest local authority trade unions – Unite the Union, the GMB and the Unison local government group – and setting no-cuts needs-based budgets, councils could lead in mobilising a mass movement of the working class in a fight for services, demanding the funding from Starmer’s government and that the super-rich should be made to pay.

In preparation for those struggles, Socialist Party members are arguing for activists enthused by the Your Party announcement, trade unions and others, to take up the campaign now for ‘peoples budgets’ – coming together to draw up a plan of what services our local communities need and what we are demanding our elected representatives fight for in the council chamber.

No cuts

Unfortunately so far, the more than 800 existing Green councillors have not used their positions to take such an approach. The Green Party has a majority in Mid Suffolk district council, it leads coalitions in twelve local authorities, and is part of coalitions in two-dozen more. In none of these instances are those councillors using their positions to spearhead a fightback to defend services. In Bristol, where the Greens are the largest party, they are pushing through millions of pounds of cuts.

In anticipation of May 2026 and future elections, Polanski, Corbyn and Sultana have all been asked about future collaboration, alliances and electoral pacts between the Greens and ‘Your Party’. So far, answers have not extended much beyond saying nice things about one another.

However, James Schneider, a co-founder of Momentum now involved in the ‘Your Party’ discussions, has spoken of the possibility of running joint open primaries between the Green Party and ‘Your Party’ for mayoral candidates.

What means then would the workers’ movement and thousands of ‘Your Party’ supporters have to hold those elected to account and to ensure that the council and mayor’s office uses all of the tools at their disposal to mobilise a fightback against Starmer’s austerity?

Better surely that the Green Party is invited to affiliate to ‘Your Party’, as part of a federal structure that allows for the affiliation of trade union bodies, other representative community organisations and political parties, like the Socialist Party? Existing Green Party councillors, like all elected politicians of a new party, would act under the direction of a democratic body in which the working class would be the overwhelming majority.

It was an under an organisational structure of that kind, in Liverpool’s District Labour Party (DLP), that the struggle of Liverpool City Council against Thatcher in the 1980s was organised. It won millions of pounds from the Tory government to build council homes, leisure centres and parks. Tens of thousands of workers in the city were mobilised in support, including in a one-day strike in support of the council! Then, Labour councillors acted under direction of the DLP, which itself had 600+ delegates from trade unions, ward Labour Party branches and other groups, representing tens of thousands of workers in the city.

Polanski’s win gives just a hint of the appetite that there is for a socialist fightback against Starmer’s austerity and the capitalist system it serves. The opportunity is there, through the processes unfolding, for the working class to establish its own mass party. The Socialist Party is fighting for that to become a reality, and for it to adopt the socialist programme needed to transform the lives of the working class.