Green Councillors’ Deadline Falls Tomorrow With Nothing on Record
The deadline for Green council groups to disown their party’s policy that Zionism is a form of racism falls tomorrow, after which Labour’s national executive decides whether power-sharing deals continue. Nothing has moved today: no group, no councillor and no party figure has said anything new on the record.
That silence is itself worth recording rather than filling. Nine councils have Greens as power-sharing partners, three of them in direct coalition, and the consequences have already begun landing: Green councillors have left the ruling alliance at Runnymede, and the Labour group leader on Lewes District Council has resigned from his own party to sit as an independent cabinet member. In Stafford, where a Green holds the climate portfolio, Labour has confirmed a process would be triggered to remove him if the policy stands. The Stafford group leader said on Friday that his members were “formulating a response” they would want to put to the membership first, and that remains the most recent thing anyone in the party has said. Four of the Greens’ five members of parliament have criticised the motion, which was passed by members at conference last month and backs a single state in all of historic Palestine. One distinction worth keeping clear: the Scottish Greens are a separate party with their own leadership, and held their own conference today.