Impossible To Ignore

Jasmine Scarff writes:

The Green Party’s inability to find a serious strategy of cooperation with Your Party, the Workers Party, independent candidates and the smaller socialist organisations is becoming impossible to ignore. For all their talk of building a new political alternative, the party has repeatedly prioritised its own electoral expansion over the much harder task of building cooperation with the other forces on the left. The problem is not that the Greens stand candidates. That is their democratic right. The problem is that they have too often approached elections as an opportunity to maximise the Green vote rather than asking the more important strategic question: how can the forces of the left work together to maximise their collective representation? That failure is becoming increasingly visible, and the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is now providing a particularly vivid example of what happens when competing organisations attempt to mobilise overlapping electorates without a coherent agreement about cooperation.

The contradiction is particularly obvious given the Green Party’s “Stand Everywhere” ideology. The party makes it clear that it supports candidates for office all over the country, arguing that having Green candidates on the ballot is necessary to show that Green support is widespread. That may make sense if the objective is simply to build the Green Party as an independent electoral organisation. But it becomes much harder to defend when the same party presents itself as part of a wider progressive movement seeking fundamental political change. Put another candidate on the ballot in every constituency and hope that every other party, from Your Party and the Workers Party to smaller socialist groups and independents, will see the Greens as the best vehicle for change to start a movement. There must be a willingness to cooperate, negotiate, and, when necessary, stand aside at some point.

Furthermore, this is not some abstract argument. The 2024 general election exposed the consequences of fragmentation with extraordinary clarity. Gaza became a decisive issue for many voters, particularly in constituencies with substantial Muslim populations, and independent and Workers Party candidates succeeded in taking seats from Labour or coming remarkably close to doing so. Jeremy Corbyn won Islington North as an independent; Shockat Adam defeated Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South; Adnan Hussain defeated Labour in Blackburn; and Iqbal Mohamed won in Dewsbury and Batley. In Ilford North, Leanne Mohamad came within 528 votes of defeating Wes Streeting.

The Green candidate received 1,794, while she received 15,119 votes. If the Green candidate had withdrawn, no one should pretend that every Green voter in those constituencies would have voted for a pro-Palestinian independent. Elections do not work that mechanically. But that caveat should not become an excuse for avoiding the underlying political question. When an electorate moves away from Labour because of Gaza, austerity, foreign policy, or other issues, and that electorate then splits between Greens, independents, the Workers Party, Your Party, and other progressive candidates, the organisations involved have a responsibility to determine whether or not their electoral strategies are assisting in the development of a more comprehensive political alternative.

The issue became even more striking in Holborn and St Pancras itself. In 2024, Andrew Feinstein stood as an independent and received 7,312 votes, while the Green candidate received 4,030. With 18,884, Keir Starmer prevailed. Again, the combined votes cannot simply be treated as though they belonged to a single candidate, but the numbers demonstrate that a sizeable section of the electorate was looking beyond Labour while being represented by more than one challenger. The fact that the same constituency is now witnessing another contest between different forces on the left should surely prompt some serious soul-searching. Instead of developing a mechanism for deciding which organisation has the strongest local claim, the competing parties have once again entered the same electoral arena.

The May 2026 local elections have made this debate even more difficult for the Greens to avoid. There were examples of cooperation, including arrangements involving the Greens and local progressive groups, and those examples should be acknowledged. But they don’t change the bigger picture: on a national scale, the Green Party continued its expansive electoral strategy instead of withdrawing candidates in constituencies where another left-wing or progressive force was in a better position. Indeed, the internal argument surrounding the Makerfield by-election demonstrated that even within the Green movement there is now a serious dispute over whether the party should sometimes stand aside when doing so could prevent fragmentation. Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley were among those who argued for scaling back the Green campaign there, while other Green voices defended the party’s decision to contest the seat.

That dispute is significant because it demonstrates that this is not simply an argument invented by the Workers Party, Your Party or Labour supporters. The Greens themselves understand the danger of fragmentation. They understand that first-past-the-post can produce outcomes in which several parties collectively command substantial support but none of them wins because their votes are divided. What remains unresolved is whether that lesson should be applied consistently.

There is a particularly serious question here for the Green Party. If it believes that Reform must sometimes be stopped through electoral cooperation, why should cooperation suddenly become unacceptable when the other potential partner is Your Party, the Workers Party, an independent candidate or a smaller socialist organisation? If the principle is that progressive forces should coordinate to prevent a divided vote handing victory to an opposing political force, then that principle should not depend on whether the candidate being asked to stand aside happens to be Green.

The Greens cannot have it both ways. They cannot demand strategic cooperation from others when Reform threatens them while simultaneously insisting that they must contest every constituency in which they believe they can increase their vote. That is not a strategy for building a united left. It is a strategy for building a stronger Green Party. Those are not necessarily the same thing.

This is where the wider left needs to be honest about the political landscape. Along with the Greens, independent candidates, and the smaller socialist organisations, your party and the Workers Party are now important components of the emerging left electoral landscape. Each has its own interests, programme and political identity. None of these organisations is automatically entitled to dictate to the others. But if they all continue competing independently in every constituency, the result will inevitably be fragmentation. The choice is not between one organisation dominating the left and everyone else disappearing. The alternative is some form of negotiated cooperation in which organisations agree where they have the strongest local base and where a common candidate might have the greatest chance of winning.

This conversation ought to have become necessary at the time of the 2024 Gaza vote. Instead, the different strands of the left largely continued along separate organisational paths. This is especially disheartening because the election showed that there was a lot of interest in candidates who would challenge Labour’s stance on Gaza. In several constituencies, that challenge broke through dramatically. Candidates came close in other cases. Yet instead of transforming that political energy into a coordinated movement, the left remained divided between the Greens, Workers Party, Your Party, independent campaigns and smaller socialist organisations.

Holborn and St Pancras is now exposing that unresolved contradiction in real time. Zack Polanski is seeking to turn the Green Party’s growing national support into a parliamentary breakthrough, while George Galloway is contesting the same seat for the Workers Party. The dispute has already generated serious disagreement within the Workers Party itself, with Chris Williamson resigning as deputy leader after opposing Galloway’s decision to contest the constituency and arguing that the Workers Party should support Polanski.

It is not appropriate to dismiss that disagreement as an internal disagreement between personalities. It exposes the fundamental problem confronting the entire left. What does unity actually mean? Does it mean that everyone must unite behind the Greens because they have built a strong national organisation? Does it mean that everyone should unite behind the Workers Party because it has demonstrated an ability to mobilise voters around Gaza? Does it mean supporting Your Party where it has established a stronger local base? Does it mean supporting independents where they have built the strongest campaigns? Or does it mean developing a completely new mechanism through which these organisations can negotiate constituency by constituency?

Those are legitimate questions. What is no longer convincing is pretending that the problem does not exist. This is why the argument made by activists such as Habeeb that a Green defeat could force the party to rethink its approach to cooperation deserves to be part of the discussion, even if one does not accept the idea that voters should deliberately engineer such an outcome. The important point is not whether Polanski wins or loses. The important point is what the political organisations learn from the result. The Greens would have to face the possibility that their strategy of unilateral expansion has consequences for the movement as a whole if they were to lose a constituency where another left-wing candidate had a strong competitor. Equally, if Galloway’s candidacy failed, the Workers Party would have to confront its own responsibility for fragmentation.

That ought to be the standard that applies to everyone. But there is an even bigger reason why this debate cannot be postponed. A divided left could be extremely vulnerable in the upcoming general election. If Labour’s vote continues to decline in parts of the country while the Greens, Workers Party, Your Party, independents and smaller socialist parties all compete for portions of that electorate, there could be constituencies where a potentially substantial anti-establishment vote is divided between several candidates. Under first-past-the-post, that creates the possibility of parties such as Reform benefiting from a divided opposition. Despite the simplicity of the mechanism, nobody can accurately predict how many seats this could affect. A party does not need majority support to win a constituency; it needs more votes than each individual rival. If three or four parties divide an electorate, a candidate can win with a relatively small plurality. That is precisely why electoral strategy matters.

And this is why the Green Party needs to think beyond the immediate ambition of winning more seats. Winning Green MPs is obviously important to the Green Party. But if the broader objective is to construct a powerful political alternative to the established parties, then the Greens have to ask themselves whether simply expanding their own electoral footprint is sufficient. It could not be. Both Your Party and the Workers Party are subject to the same criticism. Neither can demand unity from the Greens while simultaneously contesting constituencies where another left candidate has a stronger organisation. Unity cannot mean “everyone unite behind us.” That is not unity; it is organisational competition disguised as unity.

Compromise would be a much more difficult requirement for genuine cooperation. The Greens would have to accept that they shouldn’t automatically run for office in every constituency. It would require the Workers Party and Your Party to accept the same principle. Independent candidates would need to understand that a strong personal campaign is not always better than a larger political strategy. It would require smaller socialist parties to consider whether standing everywhere advances their objectives or merely divides the electorate. Additionally, rather than discovering after the votes have been counted that they have collectively permitted an opposing candidate to win, it would require everyone to gather before elections. The Green Party’s supporters may understandably reject the suggestion that their candidates should routinely stand aside. But nobody is asking them to abandon their politics. The argument is that political independence and electoral cooperation are not mutually exclusive. A party can maintain its identity while entering agreements with other organisations where doing so serves a common objective.

The Greens have already shown that local cooperation is possible. The experience of Camden and other local arrangements demonstrates that the party is capable of working with groups outside its own organisational structure. The problem is that such cooperation has not yet become a sufficiently systematic national strategy. That needs to change. Holborn and St Pancras should be a wake-up call. The controversy surrounding the by-election is not merely about Zack Polanski, George Galloway or one parliamentary seat. It is about whether the British left has the political maturity to recognise that its greatest electoral weakness may be its inability to cooperate. If Polanski loses, it would be too simplistic to say that Galloway “caused” his defeat. If Galloway loses, it would be equally simplistic to claim that the Workers Party has therefore proved the case for its own strategy. The meaningful question will be whether either organisation learns anything from the experience. 

The British left cannot afford another 2024-style fragmentation at the next general election. It cannot afford to watch Labour voters move towards Greens, independents, the Workers Party and Your Party while those forces compete against one another and potentially open the door to Reform. Furthermore, it cannot claim that no one anticipated the danger. The Green Party needs to decide what it really wants to build. It needs to make it abundantly clear that its goal is to establish the Green Party and support it. If it wants to help build a broader left-wing political movement, then it must start acting like one of the components of that movement rather than behaving as though electoral expansion and political unity are automatically the same thing. 

The Greens may ultimately learn from Holborn and St. Pancras that a movement cannot be built through unilateralism, something they have been reluctant to accept up until this point. If the left is serious about changing British politics, then the time for every organisation simply fighting for its own patch is running out. The next general election demands something more ambitious than another collection of competing candidates. It demands a strategy for cooperation. The choice is ultimately not between the Green Party and the Workers Party, nor between Polanski and Galloway. The real strategic question facing the left is whether these organisations and the smaller socialist and independent forces can finally learn how to work together rather than continually dividing the same electorate.

And Jack Howley writes:

Chris Williamson’s resignation from the Workers Party of Britain, following its decision to stand Galloway against Polanski, appears to turn on precisely the question of “splitting the Left.” Earlier this year, Williamson defended the Workers Party’s withdrawal from a by-election on the same grounds. Despite having won more than 10 per cent in 2024, the party stood aside; and Hannah Spencer went on to defeat Reform’s Matthew Goodwin with 40.7 per cent of the vote. Now, in Starmer’s vacant seat, there will be no such accommodation. George Galloway and Zack Polanski are both standing. So the accusation is made: Why split the Left?

But contained inside that question is the entire argument. A vote can only be “split” if what is being divided belonged together in the first place. Before there can be a divided Left, there has to be some political whole called the Left whose constituent parts are sufficiently aligned so that electoral competition between them amounts to self-sabotage. And that is precisely what is in dispute. Britain’s international alignment with imperialism is the entire political structure our socialist movement must confront before it accepts bribes to sit still. The Workers Party and the Greens may overlap on distribution, but the real question is simpler: does an organisation challenge that structure of power, or remain subject to it? The Greens remain firmly situated within the institutional world of the EU, NATO and the wider Western alliance system. The Workers Party defines itself through rejection of that system and through solidarity with all peoples resisting it. More plainly, one camp materially sustains Israel and the wider military architecture behind its regional wars; the other camp backs governments that Israel and its allies seek to weaken or overthrow.

Lenin confronted a version of this problem during the First World War. Parties that had coexisted beneath the banner of social democracy were forced by war to reveal commitments previously concealed. His accusation of social-chauvinism was directed at socialists who retained socialist language while adapting their political practice to the interests of the imperial class: socialists in words, chauvinists in deeds. We could say then, socialists in words, Zionists in deeds. Everything else is secondary unless it alters that relation. The familiar left-right spectrum, and especially its tendency to outpace and browbeat the actual development of common consciousness, pushing ever further beyond prevailing social sensibilities and marginalising genuinely progressive politics, are expressions of that deeper subordination. What follows is a rainbow array of imperialist-sponsored cultural radicalism imposed from above, through which the Western Left is progressively estranged from the world’s anti-imperialist forces, forces it might otherwise recognise as allies were they not perpetually dismissed as too “backward” to qualify. 

Any non-dogmatic socialist organisation in Britain will make use of elections, reforms, institutions and partial demands. The more important question is what those reforms are politically for. Do they build forces increasingly independent of the existing political order, rearranging loyalties and creating new capacities for power? The Green and Workers Party manifestos alone cannot answer that question. Political dependence is harder to disguise, which brings us to the real constituency at stake, besides the Holborn and St Pancras seat. The defeat of Corbynism produced a substantial politically homeless bloc. Corbynism 1.0 mobilised enormous political energy, but failed to build an organisation capable of surviving independently of Labour. The Workers Party quickly revealed the existence of a constituency beyond Labour, winning hundreds of thousands of votes despite contesting only a fraction of available seats. Five years of Corbynite hesitation later, Your Party triggered another eruption of enthusiasm, with almost a million signatures registering interest. 

The recurring fact is that a significant bloc has moved beyond Labour without yet finding a durable political home. Whatever one thinks of Zarah Sultana, she gave that break a possible political content through her faction of Your Party: socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist and outside NATO, a distinction she consistently made from the Greens. With Corbyn’s faction now dominant, Sultana becomes the convenient culprit for Your Party’s increasingly farcical paralysis: its failure to act, its reluctance to contest elections, and the resulting drift of precisely that constituency towards the Greens. The effect is a pincer move: the Left that tried to break with Corbynist inertia of 2019 is, by 2026, marginalised on one side, while well-meaning socialists are absorbed on the other into the pro-NATO Greens. It is this apparent “insurgency” within the Greens that gives Williamson his ideological return ticket. 

The return ticket is the preserved possibility of political re-entry into the establishment after a substantial movement away. Former comrades like Williamson may have travelled far, but the political world they leave remains the place to which judgement ultimately returns when the alternative becomes too difficult. Meanwhile, the anti-imperialists must continually qualify for solidarity. Their rhetoric is inspected. Their personalities are inspected. Their alliances, mistakes, aesthetics, manners and moral character are inspected from the warm embrace of the status quo alignment with imperialism. It’s as if they are saying: “You need to convince me personally.” But the demand is structurally unequal, and always exists like a recurring threat: “Don’t make me do it. Do not make solidarity socially expensive, or I will return.”  The formulation gives the game away. One can only threaten to return somewhere that remains politically available. What appears subjectively as the withdrawal of support from an anti-imperialist organisation is, structurally, a return to the very institutions and political categories from which that organisation constituted a break.

This is why the by-election reaches far beyond the immediate contest and cuts straight through the unresolved fault line of the post-Corbyn Left. It brings into confrontation two leaders whose political orientations emerge from opposing international camps: one situated within the institutions of the imperialist Western alliance, the other defined by absolute opposition to those institutions. Polanski’s rise has coincided with an attempt to make the Greens the institutional home of those mobilised by Corbynism, absorbing that energy and rendering it politically ineffective against imperialism. And this is where the history starts to bite. The contest is taking place in Keir Starmer’s former seat, the man who drove Labour towards the second-referendum position that fractured Corbyn’s electoral coalition with the Brexit-voting Labour heartlands. Polanski was himself among those who used the issues of the EU and ‘antisemitism’ to bring down Corbyn before his rebrand from a Lib Dem into a Green with the help of Novara Media, Owen Jones, PoliticsJOE et al. 

Call it the meta-People’s Vote tendency. The original People’s Vote sought to reverse one rupture, Brexit, through cross-party mobilisation around European integration. The “meta” version names a broader political function. When political energy breaks its banks and begins to flow beyond the established imperial order, it is blocked from running its own course towards independent organisation. It is dammed, diverted and channelled into a new organisational riverbed of the same quality, one whose appearance may change while its political horizon remains safely contained within the institutions of that same order. The socialist subject returns to the same political totality through a different organisation, for the most part without common intent. And so the circle can close by itself: a Farage-Polanski contest could even reproduce Brexit versus Rejoin in a new costume, repeating the historical tragedy of Corbynism as the farce of Polanskism.

Here “unity” becomes the vocabulary through which rupture can be postponed indefinitely, all in the name of bribing the socialist movement with ‘redistribution’ and military Keynesianism. At what point do we simply call this Fascism? The Ukrainian regime that Polanski supports does not hide its neo-Nazism, and Hitler, after all, was a vegetarian environmentalist who wanted to see Russia destroyed. The Greens have also still not decided whether they think Zionism is racism, perhaps forever pending with a statement on the plume of methane bubbling from the Nord Stream attack. This all leaves Sultana in an awkward position. She has already been pushed towards the margins, and without an independent organisation behind her, her own parliamentary position is precarious. That is what makes Holborn and St Pancras such a test. Galloway is on the ballot for the Workers Party, representing the independent socialist, anti-imperialist force she fought for.

If it was meant sincerely, I’m sure the Workers Party would welcome her, as this by-election provides concretely what that distinction from Labour and the Greens actually means. It means there is no return ticket. Ask Galloway what this looks like. Your face is circulated by the Israeli Foreign Ministry inside a target circle and associated with Hamas, a blank cheque for your murder. Your bank account is closed without explanation after thirty-nine years. You return to your own country with your spouse and are detained under counter-terror powers, your devices seized. There is no guarantee of safe passage back. The old political world sneers and scoffs at your repression under the iron fist of the imperial regime, and you may have to campaign without your physical presence there. 

There is a savage historical irony for Chris Williamson. He knows perfectly well what happened the last time he inhabited the political world of social-Zionism. Under Corbyn’s Labour he was suspended amid the antisemitism scam, yet now he wishes to support the same Polanski who invoked his Jewish identity to help make him an exile in the first place. Let us wish him well on his return, but let’s also be clear: there is no split. The contradiction has simply been forced into the open because Galloway has done what Corbyn and Sultana did not: built an independent socialist organisation prepared to stand an explicitly anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist candidate, and anybody who calls themselves a socialist should and will support Galloway’s Workers Party in this election.