YoIt is, as one green activist put it, an endless series of “constantly good problems to have.” But how does a party adapt to the sudden tripling of its membership? And when most of the people in an organization are new, is it still the same?
The basic facts alone are surprising. Before Zack Polanski took over as leader last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. Now there are 215,000 and they continue to increase at a good pace.
This means the party has a lot more people knocking on doors and folding leaflets, as seen with the large number of pollsters the party could call on to win last month’s Gorton and Denton by-election.
But, according to some Greens, it also means the arrival of a sometimes quite different culture, particularly those who have fled the Labor Party or Jeremy Corbyn’s faltering Your Party.
“We are, in fact, a completely different political party,” said one experienced Green organizer. “Most people have been in the country for less than six months.
“It’s almost like when the Liberals and the SDP merged to create the Liberal Democrats. In this case it’s the merger of a group of people quite connected to the Greens. Some have definitely introduced this Corbynian idea of seeming more concerned with winning the argument and factionalism than getting power.”
There have been some setbacks, for example new members putting Palestinian flags on leaflets that were then distributed in well-to-do and decidedly non-radical suburbs. And some outsiders argue that the Greens should be wary of what a de facto takeover of power by new members, particularly those on the traditionally well-organized left, could mean.
One Labor MP who saw the party finish second in his constituency at the last election said: “I was worried about the Greens, but less so now. My local Greens now seem to be full of these ultra-factional Corbyn refugees. I don’t see things going well.”
But many within the party are more optimistic, not least because the Greens’ famously decentralized and democratic structures, not to mention a protracted and sometimes Byzantine approach to deciding policy, make any kind of power grab very complicated.
Another Green Party organizer said: “For us, entryism is that people attend the conference and their voices are heard.
“Yes, if its membership triples, then by far the largest cohort will have been a member for less than a year. So there will be some disagreements and tensions. But I’m really confident that the culture of the party will remain.”
A party official reiterated this point: “Even if the new members wanted to change the party’s policy, it is not easy. It is not an easy task.” A single move is an 18-month process. Some people are wondering, ‘What did I just join? This is not like the Labor Party.’”
Some problems are purely logistical, for example welcoming and finding roles for new members when some local parties welcome up to 500 new members per month. “In any growth spurt there are always adjustments,” said a senior Greens official, whose local party has more than doubled in size. “But there’s a lot of extra energy. And it’s great to have friends who have never been particularly political send me messages to tell me they’re signed up.”
And some Greens argued that a cultural change could be a good thing. “Before, we could be a pretty cozy party, and local meetings would spend hours on the details of nuclear policy,” one organizer said. “They were almost like a social group.
“Then all of a sudden you have 100 or 200 new members. People are challenged. They have to move away from what you might call the comfort of being right, or feeling like a big fish in a small pond. Now it’s a much bigger pond.”
Of course, more members bring something else: more money. The party’s budget for 2026 is expected to double from the previous year, with the arrival of new media and political officials as part of a professionalization process.
“Currently, all of our policy groups are chaired and staffed by volunteers,” an official said. “Some are real experts. But others are nightmares. With the extra money we can get the process properly supervised.”
Some things, however, are not changing. “We have recently had some councilors defect from the Labor Party and they all seem surprised by the way we work together,” said one organiser. “One told me, ‘They’re all so nice to each other. Someone even brought a cake to a meeting.'”
