The former Green party leader Adrian Ramsay has said the party must fix its internal democracy to avoid a takeover by the hard left, saying that some new members “might be more at home” in Your Party or the Socialist Workers party. Ramsay, who has been critical of the handling of the row over a “Zionism is racism” motion passed at the Green party conference, said there were a “small number” of individuals who used “divisive” tactics to influence the party’s agenda. He said those members were “seeking to change the direction of the party” and he said that needed the leadership to reassert the core values and ways of working of the Green party, which was “much more about consensus building, much less about highly fractional, highly tribal politics, and of course about the environment”.
Flaws in the party’s internal democracy meant small groups could have an outsized influence,” he said. Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley, welcomed the growth in membership of the Green party and said he was not calling for Zack Polanski to stand down as leader over the handling of the row. He also said he was not intending to quit the party himself.
What I want to see happen is this issue be clearly addressed,” he said. But it was critical the party disavowed the Zionism motion sooner than the two-year cycle which party rules allow for, he said, and that the party changed its internal rules to give the wider membership more control over policy, rather than the small numbers who attend the party’s annual conference. A spokesperson for Greens Organise – the grassroots group that backed Polanski’s leadership – said: “Adrian Ramsay put forward his case for the future of the Green party a year ago, and lost – by a landslide 84%.
Over 150,000 members have joined the party under Zack’s leadership, and helped bring the party unprecedented electoral success. I think it will ensure we still have a wide appeal as a party,” Ramsay told the BBC Newscast podcast. Asked if he viewed Zionism as racist, he said: “No … I’ve made clear my position on the motion, as lots of other Greens have done.” He said the situation in Gaza was “appalling” but that the motion was contradictory to the Green party manifesto from 2024.
Ramsay said the party “need to find a way for this motion to be changed or rescinded sooner than the two years that Zack is talking about … changing the fact that a policy can’t be reviewed until two years is up.”
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