Green Party surges as lefties flee Labour en masse | UK | News
The Green Party is polling at its highest level ever with an unprecedented wave of support as left-wing voters turn their backs on Labour, according to a new poll by YouGov. After a turbulent week for the Government, the Greens are now just two points behind Sir Keir Starmer’s party, The Telegraph reports.
Pollsters estimate that the Left party’s vote share has jumped from 10 percent to 17 percent in just two months since the election of new “eco-populist” leader Zack Polanski. Meanwhile, Labour’s votes, which had already fallen in the party’s first year in power, fell by a further two points.
In YouGov’s latest poll, conducted on Sunday and Monday, the Greens placed third with 17 per cent of the vote, the party’s highest ever score. According to the survey of 2,355 voters, Reform UK is clearly ahead with 27 percent, followed by Labor with 19 percent, the Conservative Party with 17 percent and the Liberal Democrats with 13 percent.
Polanski’s success in attracting disenfranchised Labor Left voters
The result will be seen as a major success for Mr Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, who is trying to purge disenfranchised voters from the Labor left. Just hours before new votes were due to drop, the party announced that the number of young Greens had risen to 40,000, making it “the largest youth and student movement in UK politics”.
The YouGov poll will add to the growing sense of doom for the Prime Minister, as a separate poll by The Times showed almost half of Labor voters want him to stand down from Downing Street before the next election.
Mr Polanski, a self-described “eco-populist” who was elected leader of the Greens in September, is a former hypnotherapist who infamously claimed that women could enlarge their breasts with their minds. Although he started the campaign as the underdog, he won the votes of party members by a landslide.
Greens position themselves as left-wing alternative to Reformation England
The new leader made a particular effort to appeal to voters who had lost faith in mainstream parties, tapping into “public anger” and positioning the Greens as the Left alternative to Reform UK. The approach proved controversial with the party establishment warning that the Greens should be “in the middle of British politics, not fighting on the sidelines”.
Beyond the focus on the environment, the Green leader is focusing on gaining wider appeal to progressives, calling for a wealth tax of 1 per cent on assets over £10m and 2 per cent on assets over £1bn. He has also been vocal about the war in Gaza, describing it as a “genocide”, and said migration is Britain’s “superpower.”
While the government has been accused of moving towards the Right with tougher policies on welfare and immigration, the aim is to build a strong new movement on the Left. The Greens on Monday described the Government’s latest crackdown on immigration as “inhumane”.
