How Andy Burnham ate the Greens’ policy lunch

BRIGHTON, England — Zack Polanski won a landslide victory to lead the Green Party last September with a vow to “replace” Labour on the left of British politics. 

Today, Andy Burnham’s new-look Labour is gobbling up Polanski’s policies — and, rather than supplanting the governing Labour Party, the Greens are sliding down the polls. 

Burnham used a conference speech last week to frame the next general election as a fight on left-of-center, progressive issues familiar to Polanski’s brand of eco-populism — such as electoral reform, a new adult social care system, and forging closer ties with the EU. 

“Vote Green, and watch Labour move,” Polanski told his own party’s conference this past weekend, arguing that Labour’s leftward lurch on policy was down to pressure exerted via Green breakthroughs in local and parliamentary by-elections. 

But experts warn that it’s precisely such moves from Burnham, which the Greens chalk up as wins, that ultimately undermine the party’s electoral prospects. 

The Green Party is “slightly a victim of their own success,” said Luke Tryl, boss of the More in Common think tank and polling agency.  

Party insiders insist they still have the policies to take the fight to Labour.

But Tryl compared the Greens to the UK Independence Party after 2010. The Euro-skeptic outfit under Nigel Farage had an “outsized impact on the whole of politics” — but never made substantial breakthroughs into parliament.  

Sinking 

Six months ago, Polanski had dragged the Greens to 18% with voters, a single percentage point ahead of Labour, according to POLITICO’s poll of polls, as Keir Starmer’s ruling party struggled in the doldrums.  

Now the Green Party has sunk back to 11%, and Burnham’s Labour has reopened a lead over the Greens of 14 points. The initial surge in Green support is mostly over, More in Common argued in a presentation on the fringes of the party’s annual conference, as Burnham claws back voters on the left. 

John Curtice, Britain’s leading political scientist, compared the party’s fortunes to another force in British politics. “This reminds me of the kind of arguments that the Liberal Democrats used to use,” he said: “‘We are the party that comes up with all the clever ideas first, and other people gobble them up.’” 

He added: “I think the challenge they [the Greens] now face is how do they hang on to — or in a sense recapture — the support that they did have six months ago, that seems to have eroded back to Labour.”  

To the left, to the left 

Burnham’s speech to Labour conference last Tuesday — which the party faithful met with tears and applause — indicates the size of that challenge. 

Burnham proposed a state-funded social care system in the mold of the NHS, as well as promising electoral reform and a new long-term relationship between Britain and the EU. (He later left the door open to another referendum.) 

“They are all policies that we already have,” Sian Berry, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, answered when POLITICO reeled through Burnham’s priorities. “It is hard to imagine that speech … without the influence of the Green Party,” Tryl said. 

The principle of a care system free at the point of need, for example, “has been in Green Party policy for some years now,” said Adrian Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley. The party also backs “closer ties” with the EU post-Brexit and, eventually, rejoining the bloc. 

On electoral reform, the Greens are left agreeing with Labour but urging Burnham to move faster. A commission, tasked with suggesting how to shake up the electoral system before the next election, could “just be the way to kick this into the long grass,” said Natalie Bennett, a Green Party peer. “What we are saying is PR [proportional representation] now.” 

Being distinctive 

Green Party politicians are keen to talk up areas where they still offer voters something distinct from Labour. 

Polanski’s main policy announcement in his speech was a temporary “emergency brake” on private rent, which would stop rents rising above 2%, inflation, or levels of wage growth, whichever was lowest. Burnham, when mayor of Manchester, voiced support for rent controls — only for his government to rule it out this summer. 

John Curtice said those plans could help shore up the Green vote. “Polanski’s policy on rent is very, very clearly designed to appeal to precisely the kind of people that Greens have been most successful among,” he said.  

“We’re not afraid to say that there should be more regulation on landlords,” said Zoë Garbett, the Green mayor of Hackney, who won her seat from Labour in May’s local elections. 

Green members also passed a policy motion ditching the Office for Budget Responsibility and scrapping fiscal rules seen to constrain public spending.  

The party has drawn dividing lines with the government, too, on climate, its founding cause. Alongside Gaza, it was Polanski’s call to ban new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea that received the loudest applause in the hall.

“The Andy Burnham speech was impressive in its oratory, and it was clearly a shift from what we saw from Keir Starmer, but there wasn’t a single mention of climate and nature in the whole speech,” Ramsay said.  

The same More in Common data referenced above showed that Green voters, and those considering voting for the Greens, think the party is at its best when talking about nature and clean power. 

Rethinking climate goals 

And yet, the Green’s Brighton conference also saw the party waver on its ambitious, flagship climate pledge. 

The Greens went into the 2024 general election with a promise to reduce U.K. greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2040, a full decade ahead of Labour’s target. 

But that bold commitment has gone.  

“We would need to review [the pledge],” said Ramsay, when asked if the net-zero target still stood. “We did a really thorough exercise ahead of the 2024 manifesto to look at what’s the quickest it can be achieved from that point in time. We will do the same ahead of the next general election.” He blamed slow progress on net zero by “repeated governments.” 

Meantime, said Curtice, the political scientist, the Greens should focus on offering answers to short-term challenges on issues like cost of living and turning around the health service. Hannah Spencer — the MP for Gorton and Denton, who beat Labour in a by-election earlier this year — last week accused the government of “dithering” over intervening with support for energy bills, which are expected to surge in January. 

There is always a chance for the Greens in “profiting from disillusion with Labour,” argued Curtice. The party’s task, he added, is to come up at the same time with policies that “encourage people.” 

Hannah Brenton contributed additional reporting.