Political parties growing too fast usually suffer from growing pains, but the UK Green Party is dealing with a full-blown identity crisis. At the center of the storm is a highly controversial proposal known as Motion A105, which explicitly attempts to define Zionism as racism. While party leadership under Zack Polanski originally scrambled to manage the fallout, the issue remains a ticking time bomb heading toward the autumn conference in October 2026.
If you think the Greens are just about recycling and carbon taxes, you haven't been paying attention. The influx of hard-left members has shifted the party's center of gravity. Now, internal fighting over foreign policy threatens to derail their recent electoral momentum.
The Chaos Behind the Zionism is Racism Motion
The text of Motion A105 doesn't mince words. Introduced by British-Palestinian activist Lubna Speitan and backed by the Greens for Palestine Steering Group, the motion calls for the complete disavowal of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. It labels Zionism an ethnonationalist ideology fundamentally incompatible with anti-racist principles. Going further, it advocates for a single democratic state across historic Palestine, effectively calling for the dismantlement of Israel.
During the spring conference, the party descended into absolute gridlock. Backers tried to fast-track the vote, but opponents fought back with bureaucratic warfare. Six separate votes of no confidence were launched against session chairs. Procedural complaints ground the schedule to a halt. Then the technology gave out entirely. The Zoom platform hosting the online portion of the conference couldn't handle the influx of participants and crashed repeatedly. Time ran out before a vote could happen.
But delaying a fight isn't the same as winning it. The motion was kicked down the road, not thrown out.
Zack Polanski and the Impossible Balancing Act
Managing this disaster falls squarely on Zack Polanski. Elected as leader of the party in England and Wales after capturing roughly 85% of the membership vote, Polanski occupies a unique and deeply uncomfortable position. He's an openly gay, Jewish non-Zionist leading a party that is rapidly absorbing thousands of former Jeremy Corbyn supporters.
Polanski's public comments on the matter show just how tight a tightrope he's walking. When pressed on Times Radio about whether Zionism is inherently racist, he argued that it depends on the definition. He stated that if the term describes the actions and policies of the current right-wing Israeli government in Gaza, then "yes, absolutely, that's racist." He signaled he would vote for the motion if it focused on those contemporary realities. Yet, in other interviews, he has acknowledged the historical nuance of movements like socialist Zionism, admitting that blanket slogans often flatten necessary distinctions.
This nuanced stance hasn't shielded him from fierce attacks. The mainstream media has had a field day. Right-leaning outlets published reports featuring alleged members of Polanski's extended family claiming he was turning the Greens into an "Islamic party" and rendering it unsafe for British Jews. Polanski slammed the reporting as pure fiction, but the political damage was done.
Why a Tiny Minority Dictates Green Policy
The real crisis within the Green Party isn't just about Middle Eastern politics. It's an institutional flaw in how the party builds its platform.
The Greens operate under a radical direct-democracy model. Policy isn't decided by elected MPs or a centralized committee. Instead, it's voted on by whichever members show up to the biannual conferences. When the party was a small pressure group of 68,000 people, this system felt democratic. Now that membership has surged past 230,000, the math becomes absurd.
Right now, roughly 0.05% of the total membership attends these conferences and dictates official policy. Senior party insiders are quietly panicked that this setup allows highly organized fringe activists to hijack the agenda. A small, dedicated group willing to travel to a conference hotel can pass radical motions that alienate the broader public.
Former leader Caroline Lucas has voiced serious concerns about this trajectory. She publicly warned that the phrasing of the "Zionism is racism" motion caused deep anxiety across the party, noting it risked targeting individual Jewish people rather than focusing legitimate criticism on the Israeli state.
The High Stakes for the Autumn Conference
The Greens are currently polling near historic highs, sometimes hitting 19% nationally. They want to win council seats and expand their parliamentary presence. They can't do that if their public image is entirely consumed by toxic internal battles over foreign policy definitions.
Internal party reform is now an urgent necessity. Insiders are actively debating a shift toward a representative delegate system or introducing universal online voting to dilute the power of conference radicals.
If you are a member or an observer watching the party's trajectory, the upcoming autumn conference in October will be the ultimate test. Activists will try to push Motion A105 back onto the floor. To prevent total self-sabotage, the leadership must reform its voting structures before the clock runs out, shift the policy focus back toward domestic environmental and economic platforms, and establish clear guidelines that differentiate between legitimate state criticism and text that alienates minority communities.
Failing to fix these structural loopholes means the Greens will remain hostage to their own fringe, turning a promising political force into an endless debating society.
