This time around, they’re campaigning to win it. Their candidate is Zoë Garbett, who is currently a councillor in Hackney and a member of the London Assembly. If she does get elected as the next mayor, she would be the first Green to become a directly elected mayor anywhere in the country.

In an interview at the Green Party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth, Garbett told Left Foot Forward that this is a very real prospect. “I think this a real moment for the people in Hackney who really are fed up with being told that things are going to change and they’re not changing, and feeling let down by their local representatives either directly through things like failing housing repairs services, or by feeling like they’re not being represented”, she said, before adding: “We’re having so many conversations on the doorstep with people who have heard about the Green Party, who know what we’re about locally and are excited to get behind something that’s different.”

The campaign the Greens are running is clearly ambitious. In September, they organised what has been billed as the biggest day of campaigning the party has ever run. Garbett told Left Foot Forward that on this day 375 people delivered surveys to more than 80 per cent of residences in the borough.

The campaign is one thing, though, and running the borough as its mayor is another. What would a Green Party run Hackney look like? “What I’m most excited about is really changing the relationship with residents,” Garbett said, before going on to say: “I have witnessed the erasure of community activism and community groups and stories of Hackney, I have witnessed people feeling really excluded from what happens in the town hall.”

She then added: “I feel like politics in Hackney has become quite disconnected from residents, so I’m really looking forward to people feeling like they are much more a part of what happens in Hackney. So we’re talking about opening up the town hall, meaning more people coming in, but also more transparent information going out so people can really trust what we’re doing, what’s happening in the borough.

“We also want to just improve those basic services, making sure housing repairs are being delivered properly, people are getting the services they need, and then being that loud voice to government which is a bit I think that has been a huge failure. So, things like austerity and the lack of money that keeps coming down to Hackney, that’s really really letting people down, so really long waiting lists for social care and services, loads of people in temporary accommodation. And I just think this Labour council has been grateful for the money it’s received rather than angry and loud about what more could happen.”

Garbett also said that a significant step she would want to take as mayor is to divest Hackney Council’s pension fund from “any companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza”.

One of the challenges Garbett may face if she does become the next mayor of Hackney is that it is unlikely that the council elections will give the Greens a majority in the town hall. As such, she may be seeking to wield the borough’s executive power without a supportive council and face significant opposition from other parties who make up the chamber.

Garbett is cognizant of this. She started by saying: “I think it’s really exciting the momentum the campaign’s gathering across the borough. With the Hackney Independents, and if we do really well and get [the mayoralty], I do think we’ll see a significant number of Green and Hackney Independent Councillors.”

However, she went on to add: “If in the scenario you’ve described around the majority, we’ve always shown collegiate politics. As Hackney Greens, we’ve worked collegiately in our scrutiny meetings, on motions and focussed on delivering the best for Hackney residents. So if Hackney residents have voted in Labour councillors, we will do our best to work with them to deliver a budget and deliver services that work for them.”

If Garbett is successful in her campaign, it would be an historic moment for the Greens. But the party is very clearly bullish about its prospects in next year’s mayoral races. Upon entering the conference venue this year, attendees are greeted with pull up banners featuring a number of the party’s candidates who are standing in them, and there’s a session in the conference agenda titled ‘2026: the year of the Green mayor’.

So next May, if you’re looking for significant election races to watch – keep at least one eye on the Hackney mayoralty.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Steve Eason – Creative Commons

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The Green Party contrasted this figure with the publicly available membership numbers from the Liberal Democrats, which stood at 83,174 according to reports in August.

Millward told the conference: “We are now officially the fastest growing political movement in Britain. As of right now I can confirm that the Green Party of England and Wales has more members than the Liberal Democrats.”

Left Foot Forward has contacted the Liberal Democrats to verify the Green Party’s claim on their membership figures. Their press office said that the figure of 83,174 reported by the BBC should be cited.

Elsewhere in her speech, Millward laid into the government’s record on climate, investment and international issues. She told the conference: “Whilst the government’s bowing the knee to dangerous dictators, continuing to support genocide in Gaza, and approving climate destruction at Gatwick, our Green led councils have been investing millions in cycling and walking infrastructure, thousands of low carbon homes for social rent, establishing Youth Councils, buying land for rewilding, investing in leisure centres, maternity support, community transport. Greens aren’t just talking about real hope and real change, we’re delivering it.”

Millward’s speech was delivered prior to her fellow deputy Mothin Ali’s. He told the conference: “For those of you that feel left behind – trust me I know your struggles, I’ve lived in poverty, I’ve lived knowing hunger. I remember having to ration milk so my brothers and sisters would have enough for their cereal. I’ve experienced homelessness, and we thought we’d made it when we finally got into a council house. Your enemies aren’t other poor people, your enemies are those that extract wealth from our society, to fill their coffers.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

This article is jointly published with Bright Green.

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In the interview, Millward said she was “worried about Reform being the next government”. Asked specifically whether the prospect of this was likely, she told Left Foot Forward: “Four years is a really long time in politics, so I don’t know – I hope not. But right now, yeah.”

She went on to say: “But that’s what we’re here to stop. That is literally what we’re here to stop. There’s no one else coming to do that. We can’t wait for anybody else – it’s today, it’s from here – we’ve got four years, maybe less […] but we really, really have to do everything we can to stop that spread.

“And that’s obviously that we need to win as many seats as we can in the next general election, but it’s also we need to get this broader movement, this message of hope instead of hate, we need to just expose the lies of Farage – it just couldn’t matter more.”

Millward went on to argue that Reform is proposing a fundamentally different form of government than those we’ve seen before. She told Left Foot Forward: “It is different isn’t it? You have kind of moderate centrist governments and your kind of radical politics can be your home and you can be a member and you feel proud of it. But that is not where we’re at. We’re at an urgent, urgent battle for the truth, for the country and we’ve got to do it. And Labour being as week as they’ve been means it’s on us.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Millward gave her views on what success would look like for the Greens in next May’s elections to councils and mayoralties across England and in the Senedd in Wales. Currently, the Greens hold no seats in the Senedd and there are no directly elected Green mayors.

“We’ll definitely have a couple of people in the Senedd”, after the 2026 elections, Millward said, going on to add: “We may even be holding the balance of power there, and that’s true influence in Wales.” She told Left Foot Forward that in that eventuality, the Greens would be “fighting against inequality, bringing real hope, real change, being serious about net zero – that deep alternative vision.”

In England, Millward talked up the Greens prospects in the mayoral elections taking place next year. This is in keeping with a theme of this year’s conference. Upon entering the venue, attendees are greeted with large pull-up banners displaying the faces and names of Green Party mayoral candidates. A major session in the conference programme is listed as “2026: The year of the Green Mayor”.

Millward herself has recently been selected as the Green Party’s candidate for the Sussex and Brighton Mayor. “I’m now standing as the mayoral candidate for Sussex and Brighton – and we’ve got a shot at that”, she told Left Foot Forward, adding this is: “incredibly excited because you wouldn’t have said that before – that’s because two-party politics is crumbling and the Greens are very strong in Sussex.”

She went on to say that it was a similar story in the Norfolk and Suffolk mayoral election, that “those Combined Authority elections are going to key because they’re kind of umbrella elections for everything that sits underneath, so then we need to be winning a lot more council seats underneath”, and that the Greens are “going for” the Hackney Mayoral election “really strongly”.

Despite the confidence about next year’s elections, some commentators have argued that the new political party being set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana (currently known as ‘Your Party’) could pose a threat to the Greens’ electoral prospects by splitting the vote on the progressive left. Asked whether she thought there ought to be some sort of electoral agreement between the Greens and the new outfit, she told Left Foot Forward: “You just can’t pre-empt those sort of conversations. It’s all about the specifics at the time and you make the best arrangement in that time. Zack [Polanski]’s been really clear that he’ll always work with people who share our values and – again – that will always be strategic and timebound, it’s not a limitless thing.”

Millward went on to say that she wanted to see “all those people” who are currently signing up to ‘Your Party’ could be “joining the Green Party because there’s so much common ground”, arguing that “the Green Party is at the beginning of a completely different chapter in terms of its scale and its reach”.

Rachel Millward is one of two Green Party deputy leaders, having been elected alongside Mothin Ali earlier this year.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Polanski – a member of the London Assembly and, until today, the party’s deputy leader won a staggering 84% of the vote.

He defeated the job-share ticket of two Green MPs, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns. Ramsay was previously co-leader of the party alongside Carla Denyer.

In advance of the results being announced, the party’s chief executive Harriet Lamb thanked the candidates for the leadership and the other positions within the party elected at the same time, and said that the Green Party is the ‘antidote to Reform’. She also confirmed that the Greens had now reached their highest ever membership numbers, at 68,500.

Following his victory, Polanski said that he would “work every single day to deliver environmental, social, racial and economic justice.”

He added “This is the Green Party’s time”, and said of the Labour government “We’re not here to be disappointed by you. We’re not here to be concerned by you. We’re here to replace you.”

Following the results, Chowns and Ramsay said: “We’d like to congratulate Zack Polanski on his election as Leader of the Green Party, and for running such a strong and passionate campaign.”

Turnout in the leadership election was 38%.

Among those other positions elected was the party’s deputy leadership. As a single leader was elected, the party elected two deputy leaders.

Mothin Ali and Rachel Millward were elected as the party’s new deputy leaders.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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The ward was previously held by Labour, who have won every seat in the ward at every election since 2012. The by-election took place on August 14.

The full breakdown of the vote in the by-election was as follows:

• Green: 24.0%
• Labour: 22.7%
• Plaid Cymru: 18.7%
• Reform: 14.5%
• Propel: 9.6%
• Independent: 4.6%
• Tory: 4.1%
• Lib Dem: 1.8%

Following the by-election, Wales Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter said: “People are tired of old ‘Business as usual’ politics and are voting for real hope and real change. Next, it’s time to #GetGreensElected to the Senedd in 2026.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Jon Craig – Creative Commons

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Vying for the top job there are two candidates. On the one hand, there is the party’s current deputy leader and London Assembly member Zack Polanski. On the other, there’s two sitting Green MPs – Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay – the latter being one of the party’s incumbent co-leaders.

The contest has been the most high profile in the party’s history with more media interest in it than ever before. There have been multiple debates hosted by mainstream media outlets. Internal hustings have been given live coverage by the Guardian. Videos put out by candidates have done huge numbers on social media.

It’s also been one of the most bitter the party has endured. Candidates have been heavily criticising each other’s platforms. They’ve had heated clashes in public. And their outriders have been even more vicious.

All of this is fairly unconventional in Green Party terms. And with voting open until 30 August, there’s still a month of this to go.

But who’s on track to win? The real answer is that we don’t know. There hasn’t been any polling of the Green Party membership. Turnout has historically been low, meaning small fluctuations in the electorate can make a big difference. And while there is a section of the party that is very online and very public in its views, the vast majority of members aren’t sharing their views on Instagram and Bluesky.

Despite this, there is a general consensus emerging that, although the contest may end up being close, Polanski is currently the favourite to win. Either way, we’ll find out on September 2.

Simmering beneath the high profile contest for the leaders of the party though, is a battle for the party’s deputy leadership.

In a slightly complicated set of rules, the party could end up with a single deputy leader or it could end up with two. If Polanski is elected as a sole leader, there will be two deputies who must be of different genders. If Chowns and Ramsay are elected, there will instead be a single deputy.

There are nine candidates vying for these positions. They are as follows:

• Frank Adlington-Stringer
• Mothin Ali
• Thomas Daw
• Antoinette Fernandez
• Alex Mace
• Rachel Millward
• Ash Routh
• Ani Townsend
• Chas Warlow

This contest is almost impossible to predict given the number of candidates involved and the question as to whether there will be one or two positions up for grabs. Nevertheless, the names that are getting the most attention publicly on social media and in the loose ecology of WhatsApp groups that much internal party conversation takes place within are Rachel Millward, Mothin Ali, Frank Adlington-Stringer and Ani Townsend.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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The dispute has been settled with Greenpeace agreeing to make a £300,000 donation to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

Shell will not receive any payment as part of the settlement and says that the charity donation recognises its main concern “that this kind of stunt at sea is a serious risk to safety and life”.

In January 2023, six Greenpeace activists boarded an oil vessel carrying one of the company’s floating platforms just north of the Canary Islands, as it was being transported to the North Sea. 

They occupied the vessel for 13 days, displaying signs calling on the oil major to “stop drilling – start paying”. The protestors disembarked when the vessel reached Norway. 

Greenpeace said that when the protest ended, the only damage Shell could find was a padlock, which they claimed had been broken by Greenpeace activists.

In response to the protest, Shell threatened legal action in November last year, alleging that it and its contractor Fluor had incurred a total of $8.6 million (£6.74m) in damages.

Shell instead demanded that Greenpeace “stop protesting at any of their facilities at sea or in port, anywhere in the world, ever again, or otherwise face a $1.7m+ damages claim and a wide-ranging injunction”. 

Greenpeace criticised Shell for initiating legal action, describing the case as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). Greenpeace described this kind of lawsuit as “abusive” and  “commonly brought by wealthy corporations to silence critics”. 

As part of the settlement, Greenpeace has agreed not to travel within 500m of three Shell sites for a period of five years and one Shell site for a period of ten years, all located in the North Sea.

In a statement, Shell said it is pleased that the dispute has been settled “and that a payment in lieu of the costs it incurred can benefit a charity working on safety at sea. For Shell, the right to protest is fundamental and has never been at issue”.

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The report analysed data by a coalition of groups working to end what it refers to as the “bankrolling of climate chaos and human rights abuses.” It uncovered that two-thirds of fossil fuel financing provided by the world’s 60 largest banks are granted to subsidiaries in a tax haven that specialises in allowing individuals and legal entities to hide their finances from the rule of law. 

The Tax Justice Network explains that these subsidiaries, often shell companies, are set up in secrecy jurisdictions to receive loans and underwriting services. These funds are then transferred to other parts of fossil fuel companies operating elsewhere. The lack of transparency and accountability in these regions allows financial transactions to go unrecorded or disconnected from their ultimate beneficiaries, making it difficult to trace the flow of money back to fossil fuel companies.

Because these subsidiaries do not directly engage in fossil fuel extraction or production and are only intermediaries, they often evade regulatory scrutiny and exclusionary policies aimed at curbing fossil fuel investments. At the same time, banks can claim ignorance of the true nature of these entities when providing financing, thereby bypassing ethical and environmental guidelines.

The report shows how the exclusion policies of several banks, including Barclays, RBS, and Citigroup,fail to adequately reflect the full reality of how bank financing is often issued to and received by fossil fuel companies, “leaving the door wide open for fossil fuel companies targeted by the policies to continue to access financing.”

Franziska Mager, senior researcher and advocacy lead at the Tax Justice Network and one of the report authors, warned: “We’re raising the alarm on banks and fossil fuel companies greenlaundering their finances to hide how much money they’re truly putting into fossil fuels. The situation is much worse than we’ve been led to believe, and the guardrails put in place on fossil fuel financing are being easily jumped over.”

Alison Schultz, research fellow at the Tax Justice Network and one of the report’s authors, added: “The fight for climate justice and tax justice go hand in hand. Our broken global tax system is costing countries billions in public money and fuelling extreme wealth inequality, which in turn is accelerating climate breakdown and blocking action, leading to even more costly damages to the most vulnerable communities.”

The report is the latest in a series of investigations by the fair tax organisation that investigate how the broken global tax system and weak transparency standards around the world are undermining efforts to address climate action and are accelerating climate breakdown. The latest study is the first to explore the intersection between financial secrecy and banks’ fossil fuel financing.

The Tax Justice Network is urging governments to act on long-called-for, robust tax and financial transparency measures, including improved reporting standards, beneficial ownership transparency, and public country-by-country reporting.

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Party members overwhelmingly voted for a motion which said the Green Party “reaffirms its commitment to international law and promoting equality and human rights of the Palestinian people.”

The motion was proposed by a number of high profile party members including Croydon Councillor Ria Patel and the party’s equality and diversity coordinator Kefentse Dennis.

In addition to branding Israel’s actions ‘genocide’, the motion reiterated the Green Party’s longstanding support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

The motion read: “We affirm our commitment to explicitly supporting BDS in our internal and external communications going forward.

“Supporting the BDS movement is essential to holding Israel accountable, to supporting Palestinians’ rights to equality and self-determination, and to demonstrating that our support, as a nation, is not performative.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

This article is jointly published with Bright Green

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The motion sees the Green Party’s official policy on HS2 reversed. Prior to the conference, the party had opposed the construction of HS2, with a number of high profile Green Party figures being outspoken on the issue.

The former Green Party leader and member of the House of Lords Natalie Bennett was among those to speak against the motion at the conference. In the debate, she described HS2 as a ‘chaotic mess’ and ‘an enormous gravy train’.

The Green Party now supports building the entirety of HS2, including the legs to Manchester and Leeds were cancelled by Rishi Sunak’s government.

The motion was passed with 345 members voting in favour and 318 against.

Speaking following the passing of the motion, the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer said: “The Green Party has long supported the principle of a new north-south high-speed rail line but had serious concerns about the specific route of HS2 and the environmental impacts of this route.

“However, this first phase of HS2 between London and Birmingham is well under way and most of the environmental impacts of construction are already baked in. So this is a pragmatic decision by the Green Party. It moves us on.

“Crucially, we have also acknowledged that the northern leg of HS2 was always the most important in terms of tackling capacity issues on our railways as well as addressing regional inequalities. So the line must be completed in full.

“We also say loud and clear that our railways have to be built right – for habitats and wildlife, for local transport users, for affected neighbours and for government coffers. Greens will not support blank cheques or offer uncritical endorsement.

“We need to move at great speed to shift travel away from cars and flights to public transport. HS2, in full, can play an important role in achieving this shift.”

The motion was proposed by members of Greens4HS2. Similar motions were proposed at previous conferences but fell off the agenda as a result of running out of time. 

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

This article is jointly published with Bright Green

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