‘We are a completely different political party’: inside the Greens’ membership boom | Green party

IIn the words of one Green activist, it is a never-ending series of “constantly good problems.” So how can a party adapt to a sudden tripling of its membership? And when the majority of people in an organization are new, is it even the same thing anymore?

The basic facts alone are surprising. Before Zack Polanski took the leadership last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. They are currently at 215,000 and still growing rapidly.

This means the party has many more people to knock on doors and fold leaflets, as evidenced by the large number of campaigners the party could call on to win last month’s Gorton and Denton by-election.

But for some Greens it also means the arrival of a sometimes quite different culture, particularly from those defecting from Labor or Jeremy Corbyn’s faltering Your Party.

“We are actually a completely different political party,” said a veteran Greens organizer. “The majority of people have been around for less than six months.

“It’s almost like the Liberals and the SDP merging to form the Liberal Democrats. In this case it’s a group of people who are very online merging with the Greens. Some of them have certainly come up with a Corbyn-esque idea who are more concerned about winning the debate and factionalism than coming to power.”

There were some glitches; such as when new members put Palestinian flags in leaflets and then distributed them to affluent and decidedly non-radical suburbs. Some outsiders argue that the Greens should be wary of situations that could lead to new members, especially the traditionally well-organized left, effectively taking over power.

A Labor MP who saw the party come second in his constituency at the last election said: “I was worried about the Greens but less so now. My local Greens now seem to be full of these ultra-sectarian Corbyn refugees. I don’t think things are going well.”

But many within the party are more optimistic; in particular, the Greens’ famously decentralized and democratic structures, not to mention their lengthy and sometimes byzantine approach to setting policy, make any takeover extremely thorny.

Another Green party organizer said: “Entryism for us looks like people attending the conference and their voices being heard.

“Yes, if your membership triples, then by far the largest group has been members for less than a year. So there will be some disagreements and tensions. But I’m really confident that the culture of the party will remain.”

A party official echoed this point: “Even if new members want to change party policy, it is not easy. One move, an 18-month process. You lead some people like this: ‘What did I just participate in? “This doesn’t look like the Labor Party.”

Some problems are purely logistics-related; for example, welcoming new members and finding roles for new members, with some local parties seeing up to 500 new members a month. “With any sudden growth, there are always adjustments,” said Green, a senior whose local party has more than doubled in size. “But there’s a lot of extra energy. It’s also great to have friends who have never been particularly political messaging me to tell me they’ve signed up.”

Some Greens argued that cultural change could be a good thing. “Previously, we could be quite comfortable as a party, spending hours at local meetings going over the details of nuclear policy,” one organizer said. “They were almost like a social group.

“Then all of a sudden you have 100 or 200 new members. People are being challenged. They’re having to move away from what you might call the comfort blanket of being right, or feeling like the big fish in a small pond. It’s become a much bigger pond.”

More members, of course, means something else: more money. The party’s 2026 budget is expected to more than double compared to the previous year, as new media and policy officers arrive as part of the professionalisation process.

“Currently, all of our policy groups are chaired and staffed by volunteers,” one official said. “Some are real experts. But others are nightmares. With the extra money we can ensure proper oversight of the process.”

But some things don’t change. “We have had some councilors leave Labor recently and they all seem surprised at the way we are working together,” one of the organisers, said. “Someone said to me: ‘You’re all very nice to each other. Someone even brought a cake to the meeting.'”