The Green Party’s Problematic Relationship with the Truth

Image - Bristol Green Party

The Green Party, under confessed (eco-)populist Zach Polanski, have often referred to media bias when under scrutiny, an accusatory tactic often seen during the Labour Party’s Corbyn years. As was the case with Jeremy Corbyn, the Greens use this as their motte, falling back to the defensible, electoral-base-pleasing media persecution argument whenever they do something that attracts condemnation. Such coverage ultimately does little when the real issues lie internally. Corbyn failed not because of his so-called vilification, but because most of the Parliamentary Labour Party were disillusioned with him, while he campaigned on irrelevant issues such as free broadband when the country cared about Brexit. The undoing of the Greens, over the foreseeable future, will not be the result of a journalistic firestorm, but their own turbulent relationship with the truth.

Starting with the most well-documented example, Polanski’s former job history. It sounds like something so far-fetched it wouldn't fit in an episode of The Thick of It, but he, the leader of the Greens, was once, in fact, a hypnotherapist. A hypnotherapist who claimed he could increase women’s breast size. And just like that, everyone who was reading this with even a slight degree of Green sympathies has now clicked off, no doubt assuming my career aspiration lies at The Daily Mail. But, as evidenced by the BBC, Polanski has flip-flopped on the issue frequently, changing his narrative as to whether he believes in such debauchery or not depending on the direction of the wind. Polanski’s beliefs on the medicinal benefits of hypnosis aren’t really the issue here, even if they do sit in a grey area between comedic and grim. Instead, it’s his inability to keep a straight story. He doesn’t believe it one minute, then the next he’s defending the science behind it. It’s not the only oddity on his CV, either. Polanski has also apologised for once falsely claiming to be a Red Cross spokesperson during his campaign to be the Greens’ Deputy leader, and while these incidents in and of themselves do not make him incapable of being an effective party leader, they certainly amount to a troubling pattern of behaviour.

As an organisation, the Green Party hasn’t shied away from misinformation tactics either. Although they ultimately won the Gorton and Denton by-election, with passionate local plumber Hannah Spencer as their candidate, their narrative that only they could beat Reform was a (successful) attempt at fearmongering prospective Labour voters into voting Green solely to prevent the rise of Farage and company. Although the Greens' ultimate success kept scrutiny of this narrative to a minimum, they tried the same tactic for the Manchester Mayoral elections, where they scored 64,000 votes, compared to Labour’s almost 310,000. A logic of means justifying ends or playing the game would logically follow from Green Party members here, but for an organisation that is supposed to represent a newfound ‘radical hope’ for a changed politics, it has to be said there is little virtuousness to be found in using apathy and misinformation as an agent of electoral success.

Most troubling of all, there is also a deep Israel-Palestine divide within the Greens, and there are concerns of an anti-Semitism problem within the Party. Proactively downplayed by Polanski, his own Deputy leader, one Mothin Ali, has previously recorded himself defending the October 7th attacks by Hamas on a now private TikTok account. As of May this year, 30 Green councillors were being investigated by the Party for anti-Semitism, with two candidates arrested in May for allegedly stirring racial division. Even former Green leader Caroline Lucas urged Polanski to tackle the issue head-on, while the organisation insists that, despite the recorded evidence, police reports, and internal investigations, accusations of institutional anti-Semitism are “silly games”. Either Polanski is blind to what is going on in his party, or he chooses to ignore it (publicly) for image’s sake.

What has been presented here is not an ideological account of the Greens. Aside from mentioning their Deputy leader’s defence of Hamas following October 7th, which is not Green Party policy but the belief of one leadership figure, no party policy stance has been mentioned. This piece is not a slight on what the Greens believe, but a collection of well-reported events and anecdotes that illustrate a consistent trend of truthlessness, whether it be through flip-flopping or downplaying the organisation’s political realities. It should be noted that the Green’s are far from the only party who have a habit of dishonesty – just look to Reform, or any other major party – but it remains that the Greens should be sufficiently scrutinised for this. Even for their most ardent Greens, this pattern must be deeply concerning.

You always have to provide fuel for a fire, and while we all should be inclined to treat publications of The Sun’s quality with scepticism, you can’t help but feel Polanski all but wrote their ‘hypno boob’ headline for them. The Greens, and their eco-populism, are polarising as is, and add a repertoire of dodgy individual and organisational practices into the mix, and you’re going to have all but die-hard loyalists turning out at the polls, especially with the newfound Burnham bounce. However, the Green’s maintain, as did Corbyn, that this is evidently nothing more than a right-wing media crucifixion, and nothing to do with the concerning number of skeletons in the Green Party’s closet.

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