UK Politics

Jeremy Corbyn has just announced he is launching a brand new left-wing party – but it already sounds very similar to the Green Party’s proposals.

Together with fellow former Labour MP Zarah Sultana, the ex-Labour leader promised a “new kind of political party” which “belongs to you”.

They said they would call for a wealth tax, champion an NHS which is free from privatisation, stand up for Palestine and challenge the fossil fuel giants “putting their profits before our planet”.

These policies are not dissimilar to those backed by the Green Party, which many former Labour supporters, now disillusioned, have flocked to over the last year.

That could therefore put the two parties at odds with one another.

Zack Polanski, the frontrunner in the ongoing Greens’ leadership race and the party’s current deputy, told HuffPost UK shortly after Corbyn’s announcement it is clear the parties have plenty in common.

He noted: “I’ve read the statement and I can’t see a single thing in there that’s not Green Party policy or doesn’t align already with the Green Party.”

He said: “I really like Jeremy and Zarah both as people and also as politicians. I’m supportive of anything they’re setting up.”

But the London Assembly member also made it clear they would be “welcome” in the Greens, which he called a “movement for change”.

He said: “I think it’s a positive thing that they’ve recognised that the Labour Party as a vehicle of progressive change that utterly collapsed, and it’s time to abandon it. They’ve not left the Labour Party, but Labour Party has left them.”

However, he noted that – unlike Corbyn’s new group – the Greens do not need to have a conference in the autumn to decide their name.

“Maybe that conference should decide actually, the Green party exists and is doing really well,” Polanski said, pointing to the nearly two million votes they secured in the general election. “It kind of makes sense to join the Green Party.”