Exclusive: Adrian Ramsay calls conference motion a distraction and says councillors should maintain coalitions where possible

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Adrian Ramsay, the former co-leader of the Greens, has urged his party’s councillors to reject the newly adopted “Zionism is racism” motion if it will help them stay in power in local government, in a fresh sign of internal dissent over the policy.

Ramsay, one of the Greens’ five MPs, said he was pleased that a number of Green council groups had already condemned the policy, which was adopted at the party’s conference and also calls for a single Palestinian state in place of Israel.

The party must aspire to be more than a Labour pressure group. It should offer a vision for radical reform – and ways to implement it

It’s a strange time to be a Green. We have just held our largest conference ever, but it was overshadowed by a controversial motion that was attacked by the media as racist. Then, when we lost a byelection in a Camden seat that is so Labour it has estates named after Blair-era ministers, the headlines called for Zack Polanski to resign.

It does, however, mark the end of phase one for Polanski’s Greens. Polanski burst on to the political scene in 2025 and ate up attention, enjoying an easy monopoly on hope while Labour was sucked into the black hole of Starmerism. Labour has since escaped, with Andy Burnham giving social democracy with Mancunian characteristics a half-hearted go. But Burnham’s honeymoon already seems to be ending. John Healey’s budget of “difficult decisions” and “fiscal responsibility” is likely to disappoint everyone but the financial markets, and a winter energy bill crisis driven by a possible El Niño deep freeze is just one of many problems he’ll soon have to face.

Joe Todd is a senior fellow at the Autonomy Institute, the co-host of the Life of the Party podcast and a Green party member

Green leader in England and Wales calls ‘debates about words’ unhelpful and denies recent motion was controversial

Zack Polanski has said Zionism in its current form is racist, that no country has a right to exist, and that the Green party motion on the issue was not controversial.

The leader of the Green party in England and Wales gave an unapologetic interview to the BBC on Sunday two weeks after his party approved a motion equating Zionism with racism.

Though Burnham and Badenoch may still need the votes of Green and Reform supporters, both leaders have drawn clear lines in the sand

Ask a straight question, get a straight answer. It’s how politics is supposed to work but almost never does, which is why on the rare occasions it happens the result can be faintly chaotic. What did Andy Burnham mean when he said – in response to a question from the Tory MP Harriett Baldwin – that Labour couldn’t partner with the Green party while it remains wedded to the “Zionism is racism” motion its members have just endorsed? Were Green MPs now barred from a future coalition government? If so, what about councils where they are currently sharing power with Labour?

Though Burnham was only confirming what ministers have been arguing privately for days, at first nobody seemed to know: tellingly, it took almost 24 hours for the Labour party chair, Bridget Phillipson, to confirm that unless local Green groups disowned that idea sharpish, “Labour will bring any such local arrangement to an end”. So much for cuddly cross-party Andy, who always seemed so relaxed about rainbow coalitions. Now elected Greens in places such as Sheffield or Lewes must choose between power and members’ wrath, a useful rehearsal for what a hung parliament might feel like.

John Foster and Carol Peaker express their disappointment at Zack Polanski’s failure to focus on the climate crisis

There was no mention in Zack Polanski’s self-serving apologia of the real reason why we need the Green party – to insist unremittingly on putting the climate and ecological crisis top of the political agenda (Yes, it’s been a tough week for the Greens: but don’t lose sight of how we’re transforming British politics, 11 October).

Polanski should recognise that it is his own downplaying of that task in favour of populist foreign-policy posturing (along with bashing the rich) that has fuelled the anti-Jewish entryism he deplores, but isn’t quite brave enough to call out.

Rapid growth means structures need to change and give leaders greater control, Polanski says in Guardian article

• Zack Polanski: How we’re transforming British politics

Zack Polanski has signalled a potential overhaul of the Green party’s cherished grassroots democracy, calling for leaders to have greater control over strategic direction after a divisive vote equating Zionism with racism.

The Green party leader has also questioned whether political parties should seek to define what members believe, in his strongest criticism yet of a motion that has provoked bitter divisions, international condemnation and calls for his resignation.

Tories plan to scrap low-carbon housebuilding, Greens back new nuclear reactors, and Labour put oil-drilling decisions on hold

New homes could be built without solar panels, heat pumps and high-grade insulation, leading to higher household bills if the Conservative party wins the next general election.

Kemi Badenoch made scrapping the future homes standard (FHS) one of the central planks of her bid to become the next prime minister at the Tory party conference this week.

Ellie Chowns says vote for ‘Zionism is racism’ policy by 0.4% of members shows party processes are not working

A Green Party MP has said she wants to make sure her party is not “vulnerable to capture by extremists and racists” amid the continuing fallout from the “Zionism is racism” vote.

The party faces a political maelstrom over its policy decision last week to treat Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state, as any other form of racism, and to back a single Palestinian state over a two-state solution. The motion was passed at the annual party conference with just over 1,000 votes, approximately 0.4% of the total membership.

Everywhere the PM turns, he finds generous adversaries. They have made his early days in No 10 so much easier

I don’t know where Andy Burnham found his magic lamp, but I hope he’s taking good care of it. In the early hours of Friday morning, the genie that’s looked so kindly on him these past few months granted him yet another wish, with a byelection win in Holborn and St Pancras. It was just the latest gift for a prime minister for whom things keep going right – and who is especially blessed in his choice of opponents.

Let’s start with that win in London, where Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali defeated the Green party leader, Zack Polanski. It’s easy to miss how rare such a victory is. As the veteran psephologist Peter Kellner pointed out, this was a win that “defied history”. If the past half-century were any guide, Labour should have lost, thanks to a “truly dreadful record” defending its own seats when in government and facing a byelection challenge from the left or centre-left, the likes of the Greens or the Lib Dems. The average swing against Labour in such contests had been 24%. “On those figures,” wrote Kellner, “Polanski should have won at a canter.” But he lost.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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A byelection win is a fillip for Andy Burnham and shows Zack Polanski must confront the failures damaging his party’s credibility and appeal

By holding Holborn and St Pancras, Andy Burnham’s Labour has shown it can attract liberal and left-leaning voters. The seat has substantial numbers of young adults, students, professionals and Muslims – offering fertile ground for the Greens’ ecopopulism. However, Labour prevailed. Having won leave-voting Makerfield in June, Mr Burnham can now claim an appeal that bridges Labour’s divided electorate. It’s worth noting that turnout in London was low and Labour’s vote share fell 3.7 points. But that compares with an average 19.3-point fall in four byelections under Mr Burnham’s predecessor. The new leader clearly has bought Labour breathing space and checked the Green advance.

The Greens more than tripled their vote share in the constituency to 33%. But they were beaten. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat, leaving Zack Polanski’s ambition of entering parliament unfulfilled. For a party that began the year promising to turn voters’ hunger for change into a serious challenge to Labour, this was a sobering moment. The passing of a motion declaring “Zionism is racism” at its conference probably cost the party support – though the result in central London alone cannot definitively say that. There is a separate question of leadership. Mr Polanski now says he would have voted against the motion. Why, then, did he not make his opposition clear when it mattered last weekend?

Pressure is building on the party leader after byelection defeat, a damaging row over Zionism and polls that show him less popular than Nigel Farage

When Zack Polanski addressed his campaigners flush with victory after the Gorton and Denton byelection in February, he declared: “Labour’s electoral stranglehold is over.” The election of Hannah Spencer as the new Green MP for the Greater Manchester seat was a seismic victory, he continued: “I said we were here to replace Labour and this is what replacing looks like.”

But in the wake of Polanski’s defeat in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection on Thursday, and a calamitous row over the party’s stance on Zionism, the debate around what, or who, could be replaced has shifted to Polanski himself.

Zack Polanski has lost the Holborn and St Pancras byelection to Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali. Despite the Greens increasing their vote share from 2024, Polanski had the cloud of the ‘Zionism is racism’ row hanging over his head.

Now there are questions over his leadership and whether he can steer the party through the ongoing Zionism row. Will the Greens remain a fringe party?

Vivien Lichtenstein says party leader should stand down over ‘Zionism is racism’ policy

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The leader of the Jewish Greens has called for Zack Polanski to step down as pressure increases on the Green leader to acknowledge anger within the party over a new policy that equates Zionism with racism and calls for the state of Israel to be abolished.

The comments by Vivien Lichtenstein come after Caroline Lucas, the Greens’ former leader and first MP, criticised Polanski for a lack of leadership in missing the debate and vote at the weekend that resulted in the policy being passed.

There was a real chance of a Green byelection win in Holborn and St Pancras. He made bad decisions and cost his party dear

As ever, among all the noise triggered by Labour holding the seat of Holborn and St Pancras, the most plain-spoken and undeniable analysis was provided by that sage and national treasure John Curtice, of Strathclyde University. The result, he said, echoed national opinion polls and reflected two undeniable facts: that the Greens are in need of a period of contrition and reflection, and Labour ought to be slightly less than ecstatic.

Andy Burnham’s party, with a majority of 3,364, he said, showed they “are in a much better position than they were six months ago, but still not as popular as they were in 2025”. The Greens, meanwhile, remain “a more significant player than historically they have ever been”, but have lost much of the ground they gained during Zack Polanski’s first year as leader, when the serial failures of the local MP – one Keir Starmer – provided him and his party with such a glorious succession of political opportunities.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Sagal Abdi-Wali defeats Green party leader Zack Polanski to retain the Holborn and St Pancras seat for Labour

• Labour fends off Green party to win Holborn and St Pancras byelection

Activists in Camden have suggested the Greens’ decision to back the anti-Zionism motion has cost them votes in the byelection.

Councillors for both Labour the Liberal Democrats told the Press Association that voters had informed them they would not be backing the Green party after it passed the motion last weekend calling Zionism racism.

It is clear now we will come a close second in this by-election. Taking the fight to Labour in one of its safest seats shows just how far the Greens have come.

Voters want us to keep Labour’s feet to the fire on affordable housing, public ownership of water and the climate crisis. Greens will be there every single day, holding Labour to account and demanding the change people voted for.

Zack Polanski has led energetic campaign for the Greens, while Labour will hope to hold on to Starmer’s old seat

Voting has opened in the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, a contest seen as a key gauge of Andy Burnham’s ability to energise voters and whether Zack Polanski’s Greens can still peel off support from Labour’s left.

Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, is standing for his party in the north London constituency, previously held by Keir Starmer before he stood down as an MP shortly after resigning as prime minister.

Veteran leftwinger has been ‘in exile in the east’ in Russia and not been to Holborn and St Pancras constituency since campaign began

George Galloway has been elected seven times to parliament, but his attempt to succeed for an eighth this week, in the London seat formerly held by Keir Starmer, is undoubtedly his most curious effort yet.

Since the byelection campaign began, the leader of the Workers party of Britain has yet to set foot in the UK, let alone the Holborn and St Pancras constituency, because he is in what he describes as “self-exile” after being questioned by counter-terrorism police at Gatwick airport a year ago.

On the eve of the byelection, Polanski’s pledge is to keep the government ‘in check’. It may not be enough to stop a drift back to the political margins

Only a few months ago, in the spring, there was a sense of giddy possibility about the Greens. Zack Polanski’s radical new leadership felt fresh and dynamic, especially compared with those of the other parties. Former Labour supporters, in particular, were switching to the Greens in huge numbers, Green candidates were winning across the country, and the party was second behind Reform UK in some national polls.

Like Reform, the Green party presented itself as a revolt against a failed status quo. Unlike Reform, the Greens’ urgent stance on the climate crisis gave them a potent moral authority: even many people who did not support them believed that the Greens were right about the most universal issue.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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A toxic debate over anti-Zionism leaves the Green leader looking like a passenger in the movement that carried him to the top

When Donald Trump calls someone a socialist he is not using the word in the same way that, say, Zohran Mamdani does. The mayor of New York espouses democratic socialism as a mission of equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. The US president says socialism only pretends to be democratic “because it sounds so nice”; that “it’s really communism you’re talking about” and that people such as Mamdani pose “the biggest threat to our nation … since its founding”.

People who despise an idea, seeing it as the manifestation of everything wicked, cannot be expected to define it accurately. As with the radical right and socialism, so it is with the left and Zionism.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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Zack Polanski must defend Palestinian freedom while reassuring Jewish members and showing that his party can handle disagreements

Last year, the UN general assembly endorsed the New York Declaration supporting two states in the Holy Land by 142 votes to 10. Those voting against included the US and Israel. The wider international diplomatic consensus rests on a 2002 UN security council resolution, which explicitly affirmed a two-state vision for Israel and Palestine. Saudi Arabia’s then crown prince said peace required “two equal parties” and could not survive “oppression and humiliation”. His words remain as relevant now as then.

The Green party has now rejected that two-state framework in favour of a one-state solution. The Guardian strongly disagrees with this move. Peace needs to acknowledge reality: the latest polls in Gaza and the West Bank suggest that a majority support a two-state formula based on the 1967 borders compared with just 10% who back a single democratic state with equal rights. The European Greens also disagree with the new direction of their English and Welsh sister party. The EU-wide representatives argue that the policy is incompatible with previously agreed positions. Europe’s Greens – which include the centrist German party – condemn “the genocide against Palestinians” and call for sanctions against Israel’s government.

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Minister says they could not see parties cooperating, while official says coalition should be formally ruled out

Senior Labour party figures said it was very unlikely their party would cooperate with the Greens in the future after they adopted a policy treating Zionism as a form of racism.

One Labour minister said they could not foresee how the two parties could work together, while a government official said Labour should formally rule out a future coalition or other arrangement.