Green Councillors Face a Labour Deadline Over Zionism Policy
Green council groups have until Sunday to disown their party’s policy that Zionism is a form of racism, after which Labour’s national executive will decide whether local power-sharing arrangements continue. Nine authorities are exposed, three of them direct coalitions. Two alliances have already broken.
The motion, passed by members at the Green conference in Brighton last month, describes Zionism as an ideology supporting an “ethnonationalist Jewish state” that has led to the “disenfranchisement and destruction” of Palestinians, and backs “a single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine” — which includes present-day Israel. Four of the Greens’ five members of parliament have criticised it, and the party leader, who did not vote, has called it “imperfect” and wants it amended. The consequences are already landing locally: 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 cabinet member holds the climate portfolio, Labour has confirmed a process would be triggered to remove him if the group refuses. The Stafford Green leader said they were “formulating a response” they would like to put to members first. A Green spokesperson called it “disappointing and wrong” to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.