‘The Case for Climate Popularism in the Green Party’

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The recent local elections in the UK have revealed starkly where British politics is at. There were serious forward advances for the Lib Dems and Greens. Labour and the Conservatives both fell back calamitously. And Reform, of course, was the biggest winner of all.

What was clear is that the old duopoly parties are dying and ‘populism’ is on the rise.

Reform has undeniably connected with the British population at greater scale thus far than the Green Party has. That situation cannot stand: for the high likelihood is that the future of British politics will be fought out between the Greens and Reform, as the old parties fade into irrelevance, in the crucible of the dire challenges now upon us.

These two new insurgent parties, Reform UK and the Green Party, both of which stunned by unprecedentedly winning multiple seats at the 2024 General Election, both of which have genuine anti-establishment appeal, will surely be the huge gainers at the next general election.

If Reform gain far more than the Greens, that is a grim prognosis for this country.

So what is badly needed is a way of beating them at their own game, albeit without descending to their level. What must be avoided is the stoking of culture wars, let alone spreading lies and disinformation to whip up hate and mutual mistrust.

In short, what we need is climate popularism. Reform is weaponising climate policy as part of their latest culture war. We don’t get to beat them unless we de-weaponise climate: but that requires making real climate action into the new common sense.

This begins with focussing on the lived impacts of climate decline, and resilience to them. Rather than beginning with questions of footprint and abstractions like ‘net zero’. Both of which are far less relevant to ordinary working people.

Climate is relevant to ordinary Brits primarily by way of its impacts: rising flood waters and seas, gathering storms, extreme droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires; food price rises and food scarcities. It is deeply relevant also in terms of the way that our grossly high energy prices are a result of dependence on fossil fuels and of the pitiful state of insulation of most buildings in this country.

So climate popularism synergises climate action with reducing the cost of living. Plus, making more direct sustenance available to people: we need community orchards, forest gardens, agri-wilding, edible landscapes, and more—at scale—and we need them soon.

How do we pay for it? Well, most of this agenda saves money. But if there are aspects of it that require an initial pump-priming, then we pay for it by taxing the rich.

But what we don’t indulge in is class war rhetoric. Nor do we rely on the phrase ‘climate justice’, which for most voters will be opaque and remote. Instead, we come from the basis of the shared emergency: what I outlined in the previous paragraph, and forms of rationing (starting with a frequent flyer levy) are simply the new common sense, in this crisis that we are all in.

This approach has the great benefit of depolarising, of dialling down the temperature of public debate, even while attracting wide support for being authentic and clear-spoken about the transformative degree of change that is needed.

The situation is analogous to that in war. What we need is: climate Churchills. A broad church approach, appealing to the #climatemajority. What we need is leadership that can bring us together in the face of an existential crisis, not a retread of the performative, slogan-heavy politics of the last decade or the last century.

Our big Green tent needs to include people who liked Jeremy Corbyn (as I always have done, in many ways). But it has to be much bigger, and less ideologically exclusive, than some of those people would like, if it’s going to have any chance of actually winning substantial numbers of votes/seats in first past the post elections.

‘Climate popularism’ is core to how we can do this. The hard and unstable times that are coming require a new kind of moral and political leadership: steady, and welcoming. Grounded, and practical. Determined, and ambitious. Courageous, and thoroughly based in reality. What leadership is at this time is changing.

Our answer needs to do more than just speak to (very reasonable) everyday economic concerns; it needs to key in to what is, increasingly, the leading edge of the harm that working people are receiving: climate-induced damage that overlaps with pocketbook damage.

We start with building climate resilience, within ourselves and our communities and country, and we might actually get somewhere. We stop heating the sky, we start organising those here at home on the climate frontlines; we tackle bills and insecurity and deadly rising emissions and dependence on foreign autocrats all at the same time.

Caroline Lucas (who, strikingly, is backing Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay to be the next Green Party leadership team) has been taking a lead over the past year in championing an emphasis on resilience: towards building climate resilience as a way into the climate and ecological emergency that will actually appeal to masses of ordinary people. As has Adrian Ramsay.

And all three of these people, perhaps not coincidentally, have superb form at winning major first past the post elections.

I like Zack Polanski, who I first got to know back in XR days. And attentive readers will have twigged that Zack has been prominent in Byline Times and elsewhere recently, talking about ‘eco-populism’, which is welcome. But, what does he actually mean by this?

Here is a recent quote where he attempts to explain it:

I understand how the first sentence of this quote involves a kind of familiar popularism: but where it the ‘eco’ part supposed to be? It seems absent. All that the second sentence adds is a list of some of what is disastrous about neoliberalism. True enough as far as it goes, but hardly capable of growing our appeal. It just isn’t clear, in other words, how this list links “people’s immediate priority issues to the climate crisis”.

‘Eco-populism’, it seems to me, is ripe for contestation — by a version that actually has some eco content (eg, the full-scale promulgation of policies for resilience and strategic adaptation: linking to people’s immediate priorities—of food prices, flood risk, etc—that is), and that furthermore could actually be popular!

Becoming popular enough to win FPTP (as opposed to PR) elections is furthermore incompatible with a perception of having complete open door immigration policies, or with extreme identity politics.

For we need to remember that we — you and me, reader — are very different from most voters. Most voters are not progressive activists and never will be.

Byline Times is brilliant, an invaluable resource, and it is such a hopeful sign for our times that it is growing: but if you are a Byline Times reader then, just by virtue of that, you are already somewhat unusual relative to the actual voter. You are likely to be better informed, you are almost certainly more ‘progressive’, you are almost certainly more interested in politics.

This is the thing we must always remember and always come back to: the task is not to convince people like us, but people unlike us, if we are actually going to become wildly popular.

The two people in the Green Party who have quite literally done more to prove that they can convince people unlike them to vote for us in droves are Chowns and Ramsay.

What the next phase in our Party’s development absolutely mustn’t feel like is any kind of retread of Corbyn (and so we need to be wary of entryism). Greens must elect leaders who are actually capable of reaching way beyond progressive ‘home territory’, if they/we are actually serious about attaining power. And, with the rise of Reform, and the possible exit of the two old duopoly parties, that is now the game.

To conclude, we badly need climate and ecological preparedness. And preparedness more generally: eg, for possible conflict with Russia, whether we want it or not (for, obviously, we don’t). It would be absurd and deeply dangerous at this time to leave NATO.

Luckily, there is no way it will happen, despite the wishes of the marginal few in the Greens and in Reform who take the potentially deadly risk of being Putin-friendly. It will not happen: because it is deeply unpopular (only 6% agree) and obviously undermining of our collective security at this time.

We only get to win on climate if we take most people with us. There just is no victory on climate without having the majority potentially on board.

We need to be able to appeal to Conservative voters (through being serious about conserving things: “hold on to what we’ve got”), and Reform voters (through being anti-establishment in a way that speaks to bread and butter: for instance, by making the homes of millions well insulated, flood-safer, and more), as well as Labour voters.

I think it is pretty clear which Green Party leadership candidates can actually do that.

The author of this article is writing in a personal capacity and the views expressed within do not represent those of any other organisation he is affiliated with