Former Green leader questions direction of the party after ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion

A former leader of the Green Party has warned about the threat of far-left control in the Green party, calling for a return to focus on what had been the parties “core aims” in the wake of the highly controversial adoption of a motion claiming that ‘Zionism is Racism’.

Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC’s Newscast show, Adrian Ramsay said that he was “deeply uncomfortable” with the motion passed at the Green party conference; when asked if he thought Zionism was racist, he replied, “no, it’s not”, before going on to say that he agreed that what had happened in Gaza was “appalling”.

He suggested that “there’s a real crossroads point for the party at the moment. And one option is to dig in … but I think that there’s a risk it brings with it a quite divisive approach to politics, which you’ve seen from small groups of people on the hard left of politics who go around different parties to try to influence how those parties are run.”

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At the Green Party conference in Brighton last month, members present voted in favour of a motion which called Zionism racism. Despite the motion calling for one state, with equal rights for all, the creators of the motion, Greens for Palestine, provided reading alongside the motion which cited both the situation in Algeria in the 1960s (where, contrary to what the group claimed, French people were offered a choice between ‘the suitcase or the coffin’), as well as the “Thawabet”, the Palestinian national charter, which specifies that only Jews who lived in the region prior to ‘the Zionist invasion’ would be allowed citizenship in a future Palestinian state in the area. An amendment which called for Jewish Green party members who attended Synagogues and other Jewish community sites was explicitly rejected. In the wake of the conference, leaders from all major religious denominations of Judaism in the UK called out the motion as racist and antisemitic.

In the BBC interview, Ramsay pointed out that “It was 0.4% of members who voted for this [the Zionism is racism motion] and I don’t think that’s reflective of party members as a whole, it’s certainly not reflective of those I speak to”. He went on to call for a ballot or survey of the wider membership.

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Polanski, who had previously publicly admitted to “equivocating” on the motion, had left his own conference by the time the vote was taken, ostensibly to campaign in the Holborn & St Pancras by-election, which he subsequently lost. However, the Green party offered remote voting options to those attending the conference, meaning that despite having travelled to London, it was theoretically still possible for Polanski to vote – he did not do so. Ramsay said he told Polanski directly that he “should have been there and he should have expressed his view clearly.”

Ramsay, MP for Waveney Valley since 2024 was co-leader of the Greens from 2021 to 2025 with Carla Denyer, who is herself now an MP. Together with Ellie Chowns, who was also elected as an MP in 2024, Ramsay stood against Polanski in the 2025 Green Party leadership election, but was resoundingly defeated.

In his interview with the BBC, Ramsay made it clear he was not calling for Polanski to be replaced as leader, and confirmed that he had “no intention” of leaving the Greens himself.

He went on to say that if the Greens wanted to bring in the “environmental changes that we need”, they needed policies which appealed to a majority of British voters, rather than taking a “divisive” approach.

In subsequent comments cited by the BBC, Zack Polanski said that there was “no environmental justice without social, racial and economic justice”.

While the Green party’s popularity rose significantly in the wake of Polanski’s election as leader, at one point polling at more than 17%, that number has now collapsed back to 8.6%, lower than it was when Polanski took over 14 months ago.

While Polanski did not comment directly on the BBC interview on social media, he shared comments from the notorious ‘ UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories’, Francesca Albanese, who said that “The witch hunt against Zack Polanski and those standing against apartheid is a TEST for Britain; a Corbyn moment or a Macklemore moment?”

Polanski subsequently went on to share a social media post that accused the BBC of “run[ning] PR for the party who want to ‘get rid of all the foreigners’ and whose supporters have already ran multiple pogroms. In England. In the 2020s. All to keep the freeloading super-rich from paying the same share as the rest of us.”