Polanski’s Old Rival Turns on Him - But There’s One Huge Problem

Right, so Zack Polanski’s old leadership rival has gone on the BBC to warn that the Green Party is heading in the wrong direction. Adrian Ramsay, the former co-leader whom members decisively rejected in last year’s leadership election, and the human equivalent of magnolia paint now wants their chosen leader to change course. Apparently an election he lost has come with an advisory role one year later for the winning candidate. Very generous. Nobody mentioned that on the ballot paper. Well don’t you worry about the winning candidate there Adrian, I’ve some words for you as the whining candidate, but I’ll come to that in a moment. But since that contest, the Greens have attracted an enormous influx of members. People who saw something in Polanski’s approach that they weren’t getting elsewhere. That success has brought arguments about what sort of party they’re building, and who gets to decide. Now reports of thousands leaving over the Zionism motion have given that argument a much more urgent edge. A disagreement about political direction starts to sound like an organisation needing rescue. And here’s its former leader, who people still can’t remember for the life of them, now available on the mainstream media to explain where it’s all gone wrong. It’s a bit sad for Adrian really. He’s flavour for five minute for Laura Kuenssberg to put the boot in, but he’ll be as quickly forgotten by her now he’s served his purpose as he already had been by many of us. And yet the evidence behind this supposed emergency deserves considerably more scrutiny than it’s getting, after all, we can’t expect Kuenssberg to actually do some journalism for a change can we? Because if a disputed account of why members are leaving becomes the justification for changing the party, the people who joined it could find their choices being overturned in the name of saving them from themselves. That doesn’t sound like democracy or a member led party to me whatsoever.