Some years ago, probably around 2014, my student society at Sussex University invited then Green MP Caroline Lucas to speak on campus. I don’t recall much of her talk, but one thing she said has stayed with me.
A student, clearly trolling, asked her if she believed everyone should be vegetarian during the audience question portion of the event. Lucas’s response was refreshingly candid for a politician. Yes, she said, she did believe everyone should be vegetarian, but that did not mean she would ever push to legislate it. Her straightforward answer shut down the joker very quickly. Inspired, I even joined the Green Party for a few years until the bottom fell out of British politics.
Today Lucas cuts an isolated, bitter figure, clearly adrift in a party she no longer recognises after the groundswell under Zack Polanski’s leadership. The straight shooter I remember is gone. Lucas seems perfectly content to get in the muck to drag her party back to irrelevancy.
Party insiders I’ve spoken to say she has been unhappy for months, worried that the party’s pivot toward mass-movement politics was taking away from its focus on the environment. The breaking point was the adoption of the motion Zionism is Racism at the party’s conference in Brighton in early October. The motion defined Zionism as a form of racism to be dealt with accordingly, positioned the party as an explicitly anti-Zionist party, called for the de-proscription of Palestine Action, called for the release of all Palestinian political prisoners, and endorsed a single Palestinian state with equal rights for all.
For critics of the motion, it was a step too far. Many argued that in baiting the opposition, the motion undermined the work for Palestine the party could achieve without the inevitable scrutiny. They worried it would alienate Jewish members and that it wasn’t strategic. Ultimately, the motion passed 1,022 to 813.
Contradictions
Lucas posted her bizarre, contradictory speech from the conference on Twitter late that Sunday. “Is the Israeli government racist? Yes,” she said, after presenting her pro-Palestinian bona fides. “Is Zionism racist? It is both racist AND a response to racism.” She went on to explain that, because of this duality, Zionism is far too complex for such a pointed motion.
It’s a difficult position to triangulate. Yes, this ideology is racist. No, we shouldn’t say so. Yes, the de facto single state is a genocidal settler-colony. No, we shouldn’t challenge its hegemony. There is an obvious asymmetry here to which she even concedes. The inciting racism came at the hands of Europeans; Palestinians simply footed the bill. “Of course that [persecution] doesn’t justify the appalling treatment of the Palestinians. Nothing possibly could.” And yet.
Lucas, the sole Green MP from 2010 to 2024, who failed to get a single other MP elected in either of her leadership stints, went on to chum the water ahead of Polanski’s defeat in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Appearing on BBC Newsnight on 8 October, Lucas said, in response to a question about whether Polanski should step down, “I think let’s just see what happens in the coming days and weeks.”
She accused him of showing a lack of leadership the previous Sunday in regard to the Zionism is Racism motion, which she said was dangerous, divisive, and “flawed top to bottom.” She stated the motion “tries to have a singular definition of Zionism when we know that there are many,” parroting a line being pushed by many embarrassed Zionists regarding the motion.
Setting off the witch hunt
The talking point, as far as I understand it, is that Zionism can mean many things to different people, and therefore, cannot be subject to critique. If there could, theoretically, be a strand of Zionism not predicated on the subjugation of Palestinians, then it cannot be considered racist. The problem with this being that the world has seen Zionism in practice for a century, and we know that the ideology — as it exists, manifested in the Israeli state — requires death, dispossession, and racial oppression. To claim it is impolite to point this out because of an imagined alternative is an absurdity.
The following day, with a sliminess usually reserved for the Labour right, Lucas took to Twitter to hedge: “To be clear I’m not calling on Zack to step down. Today he's indicated he shares some of my concerns on the Zionism motion & I welcome that. Now the party needs to come together to make the urgent changes needed to take us forward,” she posted.
By then, the damage was done, and she had served her purpose. The British press took no time to spin a trebling of the vote share in the by-election into a leadership crisis. The 2018 playbook lay annotated and earmarked at hand. Claims of systemic antisemitism and entryism flowed. Green Party representatives were asked ad nauseam whether Zack should step down.
Rumours also swirled that Mothin Ali would make a move. Disgruntled Zionist councillors were given their requisite column inches, and obscure MEPs came out of the woodwork with statements.
Despite the rehashed tactics, Green Party veterans and leadership appeared woefully unprepared. Former leader Natalie Bennet failed to shut down repeated questions from Cathy Newman regarding that old chestnut of Israel’s right to exist. Polanski understandably squirmed as Nick Robinson hounded him with all of the professional integrity we’ve come to expect from the BBC on the subject, asking repeated variations of, “Do you think that the state of Israel, as a safe home for Jews after the Holocaust and after the pogroms, has a right to exist?"
Elsewhere, Jonathan Freedland, the eternal hand-wringer, for whom Israel is always on the cusp of crossing the line but never over it, accused the Greens of trying to “tell Jews how we should think.” He pushed back on the idea that Zionism can be a wholly political ideology, invoking the Kaddish prayer he was to say in remembrance of his father. “The prayer book in my hand will be full of references to Jerusalem and indeed to Zion, expressing in a hundred poetic ways a yearning to return. This is not some new, political thing.”
At the same time, Angela Epstein impugned Polanski’s claim that his family had fled the Holocaust on her Twitter account. “Polanski has repeatedly weaponised his Jewish background, so was the Greens’ useful idiot,” she wrote. “After his by-election defeat, what use will he be to a party riven by antisemitism, when the ‘AsAJew’ defence for their toxic policies doesn’t wash?” Identitarian politics for me and not for thee.
Patrick Spencer, MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, put it more precisely on Twitter over the weekend: “Polanksi is an anti-Semite and a racist”.
Shutting down criticism of Israel
To borrow from Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun. This is the same pincer movement deployed under the Corbyn era to make all criticism of Israel impossible. The feelings and opinions of Zionist Jews must be endlessly entertained, while those of anti-Zionist Jews are disingenuous ploys. The voices of Palestinians are, naturally, completely absent.
As things reached a fever pitch, reports of plots abounded. Leaked Greens for Palestine chats showed the group considering formal complaints against Lucas, who, in turn, had to deny staging a coup with former party co-leader Adrian Ramsay.
A YouGov voting intention poll released Tuesday finally showed the extent of the damage nationally, with the Greens on 11% (no change). For all the noise, the party's most likely path forward seems to be reforms to its democratic processes to gain central control.
But the mass media hysteria was not without some success. YouGov also announced that 34% of those polled now believe the Green Party has a problem with antisemitism, up from 25% in May. The furore surrounding a party that has historically struggled to secure a debate podium highlights how deeply the motion has struck a nerve. For the first time, adherents to the ideology that has produced the ongoing genocide are being forced to defend themselves from accusations of racism. They hate it.
The motion has also undercut one of the main tactics soft Zionists have deployed to limit the fallout from the genocide: acknowledge the crimes, never the criminal. The situation in Gaza is ascribed to some vague, blameless catastrophe. At most, they will attempt to scapegoat Netanyahu. Now Green Party members have named the perpetrator and the ideology that motivates it, even if the party establishment would rather they hadn’t.
Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders.
Follow them on X: @foleywoley
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