The Green Party of England and Wales has more than tripled its membership since Zack Polanski became leader, rising from 68,000 to more than 200,000, and it just turned that growth into a wave of wins at the ballot box. Last Thursday’s local elections gave the party 441 new councillors, pushed it past 1,000 councillors overall and delivered full control of four councils for the first time, in Norwich, Hackney, Waltham Forest and Hastings.
It also produced a first. Zoë Garbett became the first Green mayor when she was elected in Hackney, while Lewisham, which Labour had held for 55 years, fell to the Greens. The scale of the results suggests the party’s rise is no longer confined to protest votes or leafy suburbs. It is now an organising force in local government, with a base large enough to win power outright in places that had long belonged to other parties.
The numbers point to a political shift that matters well beyond one round of council elections. After the Gorton and Denton byelection, the Greens became the most popular party nationally among all age groups under 50, a striking marker of where the party’s new support is coming from. But a month before the election, a YouGov poll found that only 22 per cent of Green considerers said climate change was what most attracted them, down from 49 per cent the previous year. At the same time, 38 per cent said policies and values not related to the environment were the main reason to vote Green.
That leaves the party with a question it has not fully answered in public: is this surge really a green tide, or something broader and more political? Climate Outreach analysed more than 10,000 words and 40 pages of Green Party leaflets since Polanski’s first conference speech as leader and found only one mention of climate change, zero mentions of net zero, seven mentions of the environment and one mention of nature. By contrast, the material mentioned water companies 52 times, bus services 19 times and local green spaces 18 times. The group’s own line was blunt: “Connecting climate and nature to people’s lives, communities and priorities is… leaning into what they know people want to hear about.”
That helps explain why the Greens are winning in places where the pitch is less about abstract environmentalism and more about daily life. The party’s statement of core values, decided in autumn 2022, still describes it as “a party of social and environmental justice, which supports a radical transformation of society for the benefit of all, and for the planet as a whole.” It adds that “We understand that the threats to economic, social and environmental wellbeing are part of the same problem, and recognise that solving one of these crises cannot be achieved without solving the others; Humankind depends on the diversity of the natural world for its existence.”
That tension is at the heart of the Green Party’s current problem and its current advantage. The membership boom and the local election gains show the party has broken through as a national force, but its own literature suggests it is campaigning less like a single-issue environmental party and more like a broader left-wing movement. In March, Peter Walker described the shift as “a de facto takeover” by “Corbyn-ish” ideas. A party official said changing policy would take time. “It isn’t a single motion, it’s an 18-month process.”
For now, the politics are moving faster than the paperwork. The Greens have crossed 200,000 members, crossed 1,000 councillors and crossed into outright control of councils that had not been theirs before. What remains unsettled is whether the party’s new voters are joining for the climate label it was built on, or for the wider offer it is now making.
