Polanski says Greens would introduce wealth tax for richest 1%
Polanski is now setting out the case for a wealth tax.
Keir Starmer said in his speech don’t believe those who say a wealth tax is the answer to everything.
I’m not sure who he’s listening to but I’m not aware anyone has ever said that.
What we’ve repeatedly said is that if you’re in hoc to vested interests and protecting the wealth of the super rich – you can’t change anything meaningfully.
Polanski says the Green’s would tax the assets of the wealthiest 1% to reduce inequality.
Key events
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Afternoon summary
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Polanski argues for peace through diplomacy, saying he does not agree ‘strength comes from might’
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Polanski says he would push for wealth tax, climate action and PR if Greens held balance of power after election
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‘Unrestrained capitalism’ biggest threat to culture and language in Wales, says Welsh Green leader
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Labour claims Polanski’s speech shows he is sowing ‘division and grievance’
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Michelle Mone says she has ‘no wish’ to remain a Conservative peer
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Zack Polanski’s speech to Green conference – snap verdict
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Polanski says Britain at its best when it’s ‘thoughtful, considerate, kind’
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Polanski says Greens can’t be effective environmentalists without talking about inequality
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Polanski says Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood ‘deeply cynical’
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Polanski says Greens want to stop small boats by having safe and legal routes for asylum seekers
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‘We’ll say it loud, say it clear, migrants and refugees welcome here,’ says Polanski
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Polanski says Greens would introduce wealth tax for richest 1%
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Polanski says ‘economic model based on austerity and privatisation’ to blame for Britain’s problems
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Polanski says Britain has been failed ‘by political class poisoned by extreme wealth’
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Zack Polanski to address Green party conference
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Robert Jenrick claims ‘cowardly elite class’ is to blame for allowing antisemitism to go unchallenged
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Polanski says ‘war on drugs has absolutely failed’, explaining why Green party favours legalisation
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Former minister Zac Goldsmith says Tories can’t be ‘even halfway serious party’ if they want to scrap Climate Change Act
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Stride dismisses suggestions Badenoch will be replaced next year, though he admits it might get ‘bumpy’
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Mel Stride declines to back Badenoch’s claim about Britain being at risk of needing IMF bailout
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Polanski calls for patriotism debate going beyond ‘waving flags’, involving ‘complicated conversations’, not ‘angry words’
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Polanski criticises Shabana Mahmood for saying pro-Palestine marches should have been cancelled after Manchester attack
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Polanski says migration has been UK’s ‘superpower’ and that inequality, not new arrivals, are to blame for country’s problems
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Polanski says it is mistake to conflate campaigning against genocide in Gaza with antisemitism
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Polanski partially defends Green co-deputy leader over anti-Israel comments, saying it’s ‘contextual’ and he’s apologised
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Labour are ‘handmaidens’ to Reform UK’s ‘dangerous’ politics, Polanski to tell Green conference
Afternoon summary
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David Lammy, the deputy PM, was heckled and booed by some of the crowd as he addressed a vigil close to the scene of the Manchester synagogue attack. As Donna Ferguson reports on our Manchester synagogue attack live blog, after Lammy took to the stage he faced calls of “shame on you”, “go to Palestine, leave us alone”, “you’ve allowed it to grow on the campuses” and “you have blood on your hands”.
For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.
Polanski argues for peace through diplomacy, saying he does not agree ‘strength comes from might’
In his Radio 5 Live interview Zack Polanski was asked how the Greens would defend the UK given his support for leaving Nato.
He said he was not arguing for leaving Nato “right now”. His argument was that under Donald Trump the US was not a reliable partner, and so it was time for UK to work with its European neighbours on security.
Matt Chorley put it to him that, without relying on the US, and without having a nuclear deterrent, Britain would not be able to stop Russia invading European countries.
Polanski replied:
That’s why we have to start from first principles. And I think the first principle is looking how do we build peace and diplomacy in the world.
I just disagree with Keir Starmer that strength comes from might. That’s actually how you have an arms race. And we’ve been dangerously close in this country and in the world before to literally complete annihilation and utter destruction.
So I think the first place to start, from first principles is, how do we de-escalate? How do we neutralise existing threats and threats that are growing quicker? And I think we do that through dialogue.
Polanski cited the ANC in South Africa, the civil rights movement in the US, and the peace process in Northern Ireland as examples of how “sworn enemies” could make peace.
Polanski says he would push for wealth tax, climate action and PR if Greens held balance of power after election
According to the YouGov polling of Green party members out today, a slim majority of party members would support a coalition with Labour. Three quarters of them would support a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.
In an interview with Matt Chorley on Radio 5 Live, Zack Polanski said that if the Greens were to hold the balance of power after a future election, he would be “looking for wealth tax, action on climate and proportional representation”.
The Conservative party has issued this response to Michelle Mone writing to Kemi Badenoch saying she has no wish to return to the House of Lords as a Tory peer. (See 3.33pm.) A Conservative spokesperson said:
Baroness Mone has not been in receipt of the Conservative whip since she took a leave of absence from the House of Lords, and she is not a Conservative party member.
Baroness Mone was formally written to yesterday by the Lords chief whip, and informed that she would not receive the Conservative whip were she ever to return.
Under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, the Conservative party expects parliamentarians to maintain the highest standards, and on this Baroness Mone has fallen well short.
Luke Tryl, a polling expert and More in Common UK director, has posted a thread on Bluesky with some thoughts on Zack Polanski’s speech. His comments are here, but you will need to read the thread to see all the charts he has included.
Thoughts on Polanski speech: his pledge to “end rip off Britain” is closest to chiming with public mood on the cost of living of leaders speeches yet. The sense essentials, let alone treats are unaffordable & govt is unable/unwilling to tackle it epitomises broken Britain mood
It’s also a message that resonates squarely with Polanski’s own voters, Green voters along with Reform UK voters are the most likely to think we need to let our institutions ‘burn’ and also the least likely to think that higher GDP growth benefits people like them
Clearly his pitch is the ‘anti-system left’ designed to win support to Labour’s left – and it’s pretty striking that when you look at the current VI of Green Party voters, a plurality are those who voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in 2019.
Green supporters are younger than voters as a whole, and more female. They are particularly likely to be animated by climate (unsurprisingly) and housing compared to the wider public.
The idea of a wealth tax is popular across the board, though it is worth stressing this is highly hypothetical and as with Digital ID, when the debate became real with winners/losers and cost/benefit estimates this could shift significantly.
Risks of Polanski’s approach? His embrace of a much more open immigration policy isn’t backed by most voters – even green voters are more likely to say reduce than increase (though by a smaller margin). That said there clearly is a more pro-migration minority he could speak to.
There’s also a question whether the eco-populism pitch deters those who were voting green for the eco bit. On balance I think the Green’s future lies in challenging Labour to the left, but it might make it harder to hold e.g. the two rural seats they won in 2024.
But they obviously face competition in that space on the left – voters are much more likely to say ‘Your party’ or the Liberal Democrats are a bigger threat to Labour on the left than the Green Party
But the Green Party have one clear advantage over Your Party – while voters split on whether they see them as a serious party (38-39) that is far higher than for Your Party 16-50 and Your Party’s splits have created a bigger opening for the Greens.
The big test for the greens is whether they can take their considerers (who make up a bigger ratio of their overall vote than any other party) and make them into voters. Polanski’s command of the attention economy feels like an important step in doing that.
‘Unrestrained capitalism’ biggest threat to culture and language in Wales, says Welsh Green leader
Andrew Slaughter, the Green party’s leader in Wales, is speaking at the conference now.
He says Labour promised change at the last election, but the defining emotion people feel now is fear, he says.
After promising change, this Labour government has snuffed out every hope people had for it. People were desperate for that hope when they voted last year. But Labour lied.
I meet diehard Labour voters every day who tell me, never again. A common refrain is that what this government is doing is even worse than the Tories. Their longtime voters can see this clearly now, and they are rightly furious.
Slaughter says the Greens should be taking on “the corporations and the billionaires that are robbing us blind”.
We always thought the Tories were ones who shovelled public money into the hands of the rich, but Labour wanted to be even bigger corporate sycophants.
Slaughter says “unrestrained capitalism” is the greatest threat to language and culture in Wales.
The brutal logic of austerity has decimated our social fabric across the board, but it’s also undermining the very foundations of who we are.
But unrestrained capitalism is the same hostile force that working people have fought for centuries.
Slaughter says he has seen this in the housing sector, and that is why the Greens will fight for renters’ rights.
Labour claims Polanski’s speech shows he is sowing ‘division and grievance’
The Labour party has put out this response to the Zack Polanski speech from a Labour spokesperson.
It is no surprise that Zack Polanski, a man who said he wanted to learn from Nigel Farage, has done so in his speech today – using his platform to sow division and grievance.
Labour firmly chooses the path of national renewal. Only our Labour government is driving forward the change working people voted for, to renew our country, keep Britain safe, and make sure people across all corners of the UK feel better off.
This is interesting because it shows that Labour does not a strong line of attack against Polanski – or, at least, not one that it is willing to use in public. Polanski was critical of his opponents in his speech, but it did not stir up “grievance” any more than Keir Starmer’s did. (Like Polanski, Starmer talked about people being let down by the prevailing economic model.) Polanski did criticise the wealthiest 1% for not paying their fair share, but not in a way that went beyond the class war rhetoric that is fairly normal at a Labour conference.
In its news release, Labour also highlighted four areas where it thinks Polanski’s record is problematic. For the record, I will post them here.
NATO – Zack Polanski wants to take the UK out of NATO, declaring that “the age of NATO is now over”. Polanski told Byline Times that “I think our NATO policy is out of date…the idea that we can reform NATO…is an idea that’s on its last legs”.
Comments on Nigel Farage – Zack Polanski wants to learn from Nigel Farage. He said that the Green Party should learn from the Reform leader, arguing that Farage “tells a really powerful story…I do think we’ve got to learn from that”. He previously suggested that the Greens should deploy “clickbait”.
Breast enlargement by hypnosis – Polanski once offered hypnosis sessions to a journalist and suggested he could enlarge her breasts. Polanski has since claimed that this “does not represent my work…does not represent me.” However, at the time Polanski appeared to praise the possibilities of hypnosis, telling a Sun journalist that “this is an extremely new approach, but I can see it becoming popular very quickly, because it’s so safe and a lot cheaper than a boob job”.
Comments about natural birth – The Green Party previously criticized life-saving medical interventions for women in childbirth, stating that “we will work to reduce the number of interventions in childbirth” expressing particular concern about ‘the rate of caesarean sections, which are expensive and, when not medically required, risky’. Polanski told Sky News that despite the policy not appearing in the Green Party manifesto, “it’s not that we have changed our minds”, suggesting that an anti C-section approach remains Party policy.
YouGov has just published some polling on the views of Green party members. It is based on a survey of 508 members carried out in August. There aren’t many polls about the views of Green party members because polling such a small group is not easy.
The poll suggests that in August Carla Denyer, who stood down as co-leader, was even more popular with members than Zack Polanski.
It also suggests that, even though Polanski did not mention the environment much in his speech, members view it, by a wide margin, as the most important issue facing the country.
Michelle Mone says she has ‘no wish’ to remain a Conservative peer
Michelle Mone has said she has “no wish” to return to the House of Lords as a Conservative peer after a company linked to her was ordered to repay millions of pounds for breaching a Covid-19 PPE contract, Eleni Courea reports.
And these are from my colleague Peter Walker, who was listening to Zack Polanski’s speech in the conference hall in Bournemouth.
Polanski did describe himself (sort of) as an “eco populist”, but he’s a curious sort of populist – quite gentle, without the very obvious ego and brazen public front you’d normally associate with the idea. But he’s a very good public speaker.
He has just described how his ancestors arrived in England from Latvia via Ukraine and Poland, fleeing pogroms but still facing antisemitism in the UK. Polanski explains how he thus changed his surname back from the anglicised “Paulden” they adopted.
That speech was quite light on specific Green policies but it’s clear that Polanski is a *much* more effective public speaker than Starmer, Badenoch or Davey, & possibly on a par (albeit v differently) to Farage. It’s no wonder Labour are privately pretty worried about possible losses to the Greens.
Zack Polanski’s speech to Green conference – snap verdict
Zack Polanski was elected Green leader, with 85% of the vote on what was (by Green standards) a much higher than usual turnout, because members believed he could turbo-charge the party’s communications. Being more leftwing was undoubtedly a factor too, but mainly Polanski won because, in attention economy dominated by populists, he argued that he could get a hearing for the party, and members believed him. In truth, before today he had already shown he could deliver as a performer, but this speech showed that, in this, the judgment of Green members was sound.
This was not a profound speech, but it was as good one, with clear messages, nice anecdotes and emotional depth. Think Corbynism, but without any of the bad bits (principally, all the baggage from 40 years of leftwing factionalism). Earlier this year, when Zarah Sultana announced that she and Jeremy Corbyn were setting up a new leftwing party, there was a lot of media speculation about how it might gobble up the Green party vote. On the basis of this speech, it would seem more sensible to speculate about Polanski gobbling up theirs.
Polanski did not have anything new to say in terms of policy. The Greens take their internal party democracy very seriously, and leaders are not allowed to announce policy off the cuff, as happens with Labour and the Tories. Polanski was a Liberal Democrat before he was a Green and his reference to environmental issues did not really go beyond tokenism. (See 2.14pm.) On the economy in general, quite a lot of what he said (on austerity and privatisation – see 1.55pm) could have come out of an Andy Burnham speech.
Mostly, though, he was selling a wealth tax. While his language was at times harsh (and inexact – the political class has not been “poisoned” by extreme wealth, because if they had been poisoned they would be dead – he should have said “corrupted” by extreme wealth), his tone was gentle and inclusive, which made him more persuasive.
He mocked Keir Starmer for his comments about a wealth tax at the Labour conference. (See 1.59am.) In fact, Starmer is more right than wrong on this, because most experts think the potential gains from a stand-alone wealth tax, of the kind promised by the Green, are very limited. But the policy is exceedingly popular. At the last election the Greens were proposing a wealth tax levied at 1% annually on assets above £10m (plus a 2% rate on assets above £1bn). Here is some YouGov polling from earlier this year on a 2% wealth tax on assets above £10m.
Two of the Green MPs – Adrian Ramsay in Waveney Valley and Ellie Chowns in North Herefordshire – won their seats from Conservatives, and they are understandably nervous about this sort of pitch. But the audience at the Green party today seemed to love it.
Polanski says Britain at its best when it’s ‘thoughtful, considerate, kind’
Polanski ends with a story about a visit to a bakery that employs ex-offenders.
I want to end on a tiny moment, a small gesture but it’s something that’s really stuck with me in this month. I went to visit the Dusty Knuckle near where I live in Hackney.
It’s a bakery that employs people who have just come out of prison. Mentors go to visit people just before they leave and smooth over a transition process to a fresh start in life. It was an amazing visit where I was humbled to spend time talking to so many different people each with their own different story.
The one that struck me though was a man who said it was his first day out of prison. He arrived – terrified of this new life. He was a little late because it had been years since he’d used public transport and there was a cup of tea waiting for him. Someone knowing he was going to be late – had made the time to make a stranger a cup of tea. A simple act of kindness from one stranger to another.
That’s what this country is when it’s at it’s best. And that matters today of all days. It’s thoughtful, it’s considerate and it’s kind.
This May is huge – hateful, divisive politics is on the ballot paper. We can and must reject that.
Let’s instead look after each other. The Green party’s moment is now. Let’s go.
And that’s it.
Polanski is now talking about his boyfriend, Richie, who works in palliative care.
Caring for people, working for the public – showing kindness and compassion. That’s the most patriotic thing I could possibly ever imagine.
As well as thanking Richie, he thanks everyone in the party for what they do.
Look at next year alone and get ready for some bold politics.
We’re fighting to win our first ever directly elected mayor in Hackney.
We’re campaigning to win more seats in more places than ever before.
And we are on the cusp of winning our first ever seats on the Senedd.
In many areas, the party is ready to win.
Polanski says Greens can’t be effective environmentalists without talking about inequality
Polanski turns to the climate.
He says he is often asked if the Green party is an environmental movement or a social justice movement.
As if you can’t speak up for our working class or LGBT+ communities at the same time as challenging fossil fuel companies. Let’s clear this up. You can’t be an effective environmentalist without talking about the deep inequality in our society.
The climate crisis is also the cost of living crisis and will hit the poorest communities hardest. Food inflation is made worse by climate breakdown.
We live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world – and we have just had the hottest summer on record.
Labour made a pledge for £28bn on Green investment before the election. They ditched it before they even got a sniff of power.
And Polanski goes on to attack Labour for its record on civil rights.
This country has a proud tradition of protecting civil liberties – but once again a Labour government is cracking down on our rights.
From terrorist proscription against protesters
To banning journalists from their conference
To diving into a rushed evidence-free plan for digital IDs that are likely to discriminate against minorities
The alarm bells of authoritarianism are now ringing.
And it’s down to us, the Green party, to take a stand and say that our rights and our liberties are not negotiable, and we will do everything in our power to protect both our privacy and defend our juries.
