What on earth has happened to the Green party? In addition to the preservation of the environment, they have now adopted a new target: opposition to Zionism. An obsession with Gaza (ignoring the other wars going on) is very fashionable at the moment. Their condemnation of ‘Zionism as Racism’ means that everyone who has supported or does now support the idea of Israel as a homeland for Jews under the ‘two state system’ is labelled as racist.

I can’t believe how we all got it so wrong for so many years. There was almost universal agreement that the attacks on Jewry over many centuries, culminating in the horrors of the 2nd World War, meant that exceptional measures had to be taken – a homeland had to be found for them.

That doesn’t mean of course that the present implementation of Zionism is justifiable. Zionism under Netanyahu has meant taking over by force extensive areas where Palestinians have traditionally lived until now. But that doesn’t mean that Zionism is in and of itself racist. That is vastly over-simplistic.

We don’t regard the conflict in Ukraine as a racist act by Russia. Their ostensible justification for the attack is that Ukraine is naturally a part of the Old Russian empire, that Ukraine has been taken over by politicians who refuse to recognise this and so resist reunification – actually, expropriation by Russia.

Stealing from someone of a different ethnicity is not as such a racist act – it depends on the motivation of the thief. And neither is expropriation of land necessarily a racist act. It ought though to be a crime under the law of any civilised country.

Keir Starmer threw out many antizionists from the Labour party (including ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’) since when they seem to have coalesced around either ‘Your Party’ or, as we now see, the Greens. And they’re the sort of people who go to party conferences to make their voices  heard and, in imposing their views on others, take over the party itself, something to which the Green party constitution is particularly susceptible.

Since the election of Zack Polanski as their leader, the Greens have gone off in new directions.  In addition to their obsession with Zionism, ‘Your Party’, the Greens and, apparently, the NHS are also linked by their opposition to the Supreme Court’s definition of sex. They are still conducting the trans war, at least amongst their own ranks. They still say that trans men are men and trans women are women – no argument allowed!!

I suspect though that most ordinary people are not very engaged in that controversy. They think that the Judges have spoken and that’s that. Just as before the trans wars broke out though, most people would think that trans people should be treated with respect: I doubt, however, that they think they should be elevated to a special status, able to override the rights of others – actual women.

But this is typical of left-wing extremists – they have a juvenile, unrealistic attachment to idealism. The rest of us tend to say ‘in an ideal world, we would...’ thereby admitting that strict adherence to a principle can have unintended consequences in the real world. Our ideals should take account of this.

In an ideal world, we would all be pacifists. In the real world, sometimes wars have to be fought to stop aggressors taking over.

In an ideal world, we would all share our resources, living comfortable lives without the need to compete. But pure socialism, or Marxism, wherever implemented, has never worked as it doesn’t take into account human nature.

Socialism ‘light’ on the other hand, a form of socialism adapted to how we actually think and act as empathetic human beings, can be beneficial. It supports the poor through taxation of the richer members of society, but does not try to produce actual equality. It allows of private enterprise and does not attempt to put the State in charge of everything.

The problem with ideals is that, by their ardent supporters, they become regarded as in some sense the word of god - even if the supporters are atheists. Any deviation from the principle enshrined in that ideal is to be rejected. There is no acceptance that ideals are simply an imperfect attempt to frame our action in a way which we regard as beneficial in a general sense. We cannot foresee all the consequences of any particular definition and so have to be prepared to bend and shape our ideals to meet the realities of our lives.

That is not good enough for the fundamentalists. Having had a committee meeting to define the ideal with, no doubt, numerous points of order, they require complete obedience to that formula. I don’t think we should go quite as far as Groucho Marx when he said: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.", but some malleability is always a good idea.

But we also see that ideals espoused by fundamentalists of the left tend to wax and wane as time goes on. There are fashions even in ideals. And fashionable ideals are required to keep the party faithful interested. They want something bright, shiny and new.

This is perhaps another reason why the push to put the environment into the background amongst the Greens was successful. The likes of ‘Just Stop Oil’ and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade us all of the need immediately to abandon central heating, with its reliance on carbon-based fuels. We should instead go back to wearing warm winter woollies.

But in a less extreme way, the need to preserve the environment has become relatively normal in our thinking, complete with more bins than we used to have. And so the environmental cause has, at one and the same time, been relatively successful and become a little passé. We may not do all we can to look after our environment, but It’s not at the cutting edge of protest any longer.

Which is presumably why, in order to keep the party ‘relevant’, at least to its members, other ideals have been espoused and taken on with the same sense of righteousness which previously applied to ecological concerns. It may also be that the Greens see that the environmental torch has been, in effect, passed to Labour, in the form of Ed Milliband with his unremitting emphasis on net zero.

What though about the right? The same tropes keep being repeated. Keep out the immigrants, reduce taxes and slim down the state. And for a country which had a vast empire, ironically, the right seems to have decided that international alliances are a bad thing. Presumably because we’re not in charge.

But there has been a relatively recent addition to all of this – the call for the abandonment of net zero. This has emerged as a more nuanced version of the complete rejection of the idea of human-induced climate change.

There are of course still those who persist in denying the conclusions of our scientists, but I have the impression that most people, particularly after the summer we’ve just had, do now accept that we’re looking at a much hotter future.

Obviously, however, we are only a relatively minor producer of CO2,. So then, saying that nothing we do can have a significant global effect is a convenient alternative to outright denial of global warming by the extreme right. They instead paint a picture of warm summers, productive vineyards in the South and finally some decent weather for the Scots.

Of course, they have a point. The UK’s direct influence on global warming will be very minor. But if we completely disengage from the fight, then we will encourage others to do the same. And ultimately it will work to our disadvantage, as many people from many other countries try to come to our pleasant land to get away from their flooded, overheated, uninhabitable territories.

And what will the right do then? Will they build a wall?

8 October 2026

Paul Buckingham