Category: Elections

There has been much talk in the various Your Party (YP) Lewisham WhatsApp groups concerning how we should relate to the Greens, when it comes to the local elections in May 2026, with some suggesting that YP should stand down in certain areas.

This document will attempt to set out not only why we should do no such thing but also as to why we should be opposing the Greens as fiercely as we would Tories and Reform etc. We want to stress that this is not meant as a personal attack against any YP comrades who’re also in the Green Party.

For various political, historical and social reasons the Green Party has little if any purchase in the working class. The Labour Party in contrast, for all its sins, (that not even Adam’s fig leaf could hide) does still have a link via the trade union bureaucracy, and at least in the past, sometimes pretended to represent the working class. Of course, while we recognise this distinction, we are totally opposed to Starmer’s reactionary pro-capitalist government.

At the moment, the Greens are riding high in the saddle thanks to having a new, young, charismatic leader, and Labour and the Tories imploding with the Liberal Democrats sidelined, while YP is gripped by arguments at the top. This has meant that, almost de facto, some part of the left-wing vote and potential YP members as well as support in the polls, have gone to the Greens.

All of this is understandable, but is being taken as read by some in YP that this is sufficient for us to give our support to this capitalist party, either directly or indirectly through electoral pacts.

• The Greens as a party have issues with certain aspects of capitalism, which they want to rein in – radical reformism, if you will. But that does not make them anti-capitalist per se; their mantra of implementing a “wealth tax” and other limited reforms are measures that more far-sighted capitalists might well advocate to shore up popular support for the system.
• When in power in other countries, such as Ireland and Germany, the Greens have been happy to be incorporated into regional and state level structures that support capitalism and imperialism: for example, the Greens’ support for the Bundeswehr intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, and the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
• Just as serious have been their actions at local council level where they’ve tried to break local government strikes in Brighton and implemented significant cuts there and in Bristol. Zack Polanski is on record as saying, in the case of Bristol, that they need to implement cuts, because otherwise “the government comes in and then does all the cuts anyway”, which “can be even worse than actually making the cuts in the first place”. And this is in advance, when he is still in opposition – what would be his line if he were actually in power?!
• Also, many of the Labour Party councillors who have defected to the Green Party over the last 18 months have done so over being asked to make one cut too many. This implies that their stance on cuts and their party allegiances are opportunistic. They clearly do not adhere to ‘no cuts’ on a principled basis.
• Jeremy Corbyn and those around him keep on telling us that YP is a “New kind of politics”, and yet even before a ballot is cast, we’re already talking horse trading and backroom deals. So, this is not just about the Green Party, but about our attitude to electoral politics overall. We need to remember that class struggle activity should be our main focus if YP is to be socialist in any meaningful sense. It’s not just about the state of the roads, or the bin collections. But we will work alongside the Greens and other forces in actions where our interests coincide, for example opposing a fascist rally, even though we cannot give them electoral or any other form of political support.
• The most important thing we should do is to build the branches, solidify our programme and make it known.
• However, if the consensus is to stand YP candidates in Lewisham in the May elections, then an “anti-cuts” stance should be the no. 1 priority and everything else flows from that. (More on concrete electoral policies later).
• We know that both Southwark and Lewisham councils are gearing up for yet another savage set of cuts. This in turn means a principled anti-cuts campaign has to go beyond that of the electoral cycle. Doing so: (1) not only stops the decimation of jobs and services but rolls them back (2) It also stems the racist, anti-working class poison of Reform (btw Reform are not big in South East London, but they should not be used as a bogeyman to frighten people: Halloween has passed).
• If the “new kind of politics” is to have any meaning when it comes to fighting cuts and austerity then it has to start not from being ‘pragmatic’, nor from a “people’s budget”, based on the idea that we manage the local capitalist budget until the money runs out and then appeal to central government for more crumbs.
• We should be able to say to people at the door that we’re not just here for elections whether local or national, that we’re defenders of the community, tribunes of the oppressed. For example, we should call for the nationalisation without compensation of Landsec and the landlords. That’s the sort of thing we should be talking about – not which ward to concede to the Greens or the Liberal Democrats.