Andy Burnham’s landslide victory in the Makerfield by-election may have swallowed the Green vote – leaving them on just 0.7 per cent and costing their deposit – but the party is already plotting its retaliation. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, plans to paint the new prime minister as a continuity Starmerite, arguing that while the face in No 10 has changed, the Parliamentary Labour Party remains the same.
“Burnham is essentially Labour’s last card,” a source close to Polanski said. “They’re betting everything on him succeeding but we know he’s going to disappoint voters sooner or later.” The remark encapsulates a deepening internal debate over how aggressively the Greens should confront Burnham’s administration. Green MPs, who come from a different party tradition to their leader, want to wait and see – “let him make his own mistakes,” one source said. But Polanski’s allies and some senior officials favour a more boisterous approach from the get-go.
“Green leader Zack Polanski plans to paint Andy Burnham as continuity Labour and challenge his top appointments.”
Polanski intends to challenge Burnham’s appointments, particularly the selection of James Purnell as his chief of staff and the rumoured appointment of Josh Simons to a senior No 10 role. “Starmer had a huge block of ex-lobbyists as MPs and now so does Burnham,” a source close to Polanski said. “Sticking a new face on Labour won’t change its makeup.”
The strategy carries risks. The Greens’ national polling has slipped from almost 20 per cent in March to 13 per cent at the end of June, raising the possibility that former Labour voters who defected under Keir Starmer might now return to Burnham’s party. One senior Green pushed back: “We know that once people vote Green once, they tend to stick with us. People don’t see it as ‘lending’ us their vote.”
In the local elections in May the party performed strongly, taking councils from Labour in London and consolidating its foothold in the north-west, holding on to wards covering Hannah Spencer’s Gorton and Denton constituency. Now the Greens are pouring resources into the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election, a race polls suggest will be very difficult for them to win. They will need to break through in places like Makerfield – which one insider described as the “left-behind places” the party has decided to target.
Polanski, who was brought up in north Manchester, has already campaigned there with the party’s candidate, Geraldine Coggins, a councillor on Trafford Council for the past eight years. Next week the party plans to launch its manifesto for the race. Whether Burnham’s coattails can pull Labour voters back – and whether the Greens can convince them to stay – will be the defining question of the contest.