Polanski claims Labour has offered just ‘toxic combination of chaos and cowardice’ – UK politics live
Polanski claims Labour government has just offered ‘toxic combination of chaos and cowardice’
Polanski says the national Labour government has let people down.
What we have seen is a toxic combination of chaos and cowardice. A government that has no plans, no vision and no real change. A government that is not just been complicit in genocid; a government that has watered down its promises on workers rights, and a government that brought Peter Mandelson into the very heart of its administration.
And the reason why I talk about all of this now is because the hypocrisy, the cynicism we see in government – that’s filtered down to Labour-run councils.
Polanski cites housing as an example.
Let’s start with the fact that we had a government that promised to ban section 21 evictions – no fault evictions.
But while they dithered and delayed for ages about doing it, Labour councils were still using loopholes to evict their own tenants around section 21, including in Lambeth, next door, where they were still proclaiming themselves to be the party of renters – yet they were investigated for maladministration, essential repairs weren’t being carried out, there were people living with no heating, no hot water, while [Labour] were still claiming to be the party of renters.
Polanski claims the situation is similar in Hackney.
Key events
Q: Would you include arms in your call for tougher sanctions on Israel?
Polanski says all options should be on the table. Israel is behaving “in a completely uncontrolled way”, he says. It is acting like “a rogue state”.
Q: Will you keep the triple lock?
Polanski says the party will say more about this in its manifesto.
He does accept that the younger generation is being “screwed over”. But he does not agree with the idea that younger people need to be pitted against older people.
Q: [From the Daily Mail] Will you drop your plan to cut motorway speed limits to 55mph in the light of polling showing 60% of your supporters are not in favour?
Polanski says the Mail and the Telegraph are always going through past Green party policy documents, and ignoring qualifing comments saying the policy is under development.
He says, in a fuel crisis, reducing speed limits can make sense. But he says he wants more focus on public transport.
Polanski says government should be building more social housing, not spending £70bn on welfare going straight to private landlords
Q: How can you push for rent controls when that is not something councils cannot deliver?
Polanski says people talk about rent controls as a “wild” idea. But in the UK the experiment has been not having rent controls, he says.
He goes on:
I think what’s wild is that we’ve spent over £70bn in the last five years on welfare, which has been money going straight from the government into the pockets of private landlords, as opposed to building social homes or council homes that could be rent capped or rent controlled straight away, whether controlled under local authorities.
Q: Do you accept that tougher sanctions on Israel might harm the UK economically?
Polanski says he does not want to be adding to the cost of living for people in the UK.
But he also says you cannot put a price on protecting human life.
He goes on:
I think we need to look at what does economic sovereignty look like and where we’re relying on countries that have bad human rights records, or countries that are committing human rights abuses or terror acts – as we’re seeing this rogue state, Israel, doing at the moment – it’s clearly important that we disentangle from that.
That means tougher sanctions, he says.
But that also means having an industrial revolution in this country, he says.
Q: The Labour party is accusing the Greens of hypocrisy, because in some areas the Greens have blocked housebuilding.
Polanski says he does not accept that the Green party is blocking any more homes than any other party.
And he says, if a development is just going to build homes too expensive for more people, it should be blocked.
Polanski says he has been ‘vindicated’ because Trump’s recent comments show he was right to say US not reliable ally
Polanski is now taking questions.
Q: Do you want the Greens to review their policy on Nato, and for the UK to leave the alliance?
Polanski says Donald Trump is increasingly unreliable.
The UK should be working more with its European allies, he says.
Brexit was a catastrophic decision, he says.
He says Labour used to attack him for what he said about Nato and Donald Trump. But now he feels “vindicated” because Labour ministers are now agreeing with his assessment of Trump.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to look at this man and say, this is not someone we can rely on for the security of this country.
Ultimately, I also think we need to be looking at a proper strategic defence review to look at other threats to this nation, both in terms of pandemic resilience, cyber security and food resilience.
Polanski says the Greens have made a difference in local government. He cites Lewes as an example.
Lewes Greens have built hundreds of council homes over the last four years, and there are still hundreds more in the pipeline. And the key here is it’s not just about quantity, the quality of the homes. They have set up a future home standard to make sure that every home that is built is affordable, accessible.
And in Bristol Greens have build more affordable homes too, he says.
Polanski claims Labour government has just offered ‘toxic combination of chaos and cowardice’
Polanski says the national Labour government has let people down.
What we have seen is a toxic combination of chaos and cowardice. A government that has no plans, no vision and no real change. A government that is not just been complicit in genocid; a government that has watered down its promises on workers rights, and a government that brought Peter Mandelson into the very heart of its administration.
And the reason why I talk about all of this now is because the hypocrisy, the cynicism we see in government – that’s filtered down to Labour-run councils.
Polanski cites housing as an example.
Let’s start with the fact that we had a government that promised to ban section 21 evictions – no fault evictions.
But while they dithered and delayed for ages about doing it, Labour councils were still using loopholes to evict their own tenants around section 21, including in Lambeth, next door, where they were still proclaiming themselves to be the party of renters – yet they were investigated for maladministration, essential repairs weren’t being carried out, there were people living with no heating, no hot water, while [Labour] were still claiming to be the party of renters.
Polanski claims the situation is similar in Hackney.
Polanski calls for ‘much more robust’ sanctions against Israel
Polanski moves on to the Iran war, and the ongoing Israeli attacks against Lebanon. He says:
It is outrageous that Israel are still enjoying diplomatic and trade privileges from the international community. As a Green party, we are calling on this government to make much more robust sanctions, to withdraw the UK-Israel trade agreement and to end the genocide.
And we know it’s not just Lebanon. We also see this going on in Iran. And the prime minister is not being entirely truthful with us all, with the country. He keeps saying that we are not involved with this war, but we still have UK soil and UK bases where US bombers are flying over to Iran. And what we need to do is disentangle the UK military and the US military, ban the US from using our air spaces, and do exactly what other European allies like Pedro Sánchez in Spain have done and say, this war is not in our name and we want nothing to do with it.
Zack Polanski says Greens heading for record results in this year’s English local elections
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, is speaking now.
He says people ask him what a good result for the Greens would be.
In 2023, we had record breaking results as a Green party. We got over 241 new councillors.
Now, 2023 was an election where double the number of seats were in play than there are at this election.
Nevertheless, I am confident but not complacent in this election.
We are going to beat 241 councillors and we are heading for a new record breaking result for the Green party.
Zoë Garbett, the Green candidate for Hackney mayor, spoke next.
She said the Greens were getting “thousands and thousands of new members going out, knocking on doors across the city and campaigning in so many wards”.
Zack Polanski speaks at launch of Green party’s campaign for local elections
Zack Polanski will soon be speaking at the Green party’s local elections campaign launch.
But the first speaker is Lewisham Green councillor Liam Shrivastava, a Lewisham councillor. He starts by complaining about Labour having a stranglehold on London politics. At the last election every single councillor elected in Lewisham was Labour – “including me”, he adds, to laughter.
