Zack Polanksi has urged voters to back the Greens to force changes from Andy Burnham, arguing his party has the power to move Labour in "the right direction". In his speech to the party's annual conference, the Green leader said that "sustained pressure" from his party had made forced Labour into changing its stance on issues including climate and its stance towards Israel. He told activists in Brighton that Labour had failed to take action on housing, as he called for a three-year cap to limit rent rises in the private sector.
And he said that voting for the Greens would force changes from the government, telling members: "Vote Green, and watch Labour move". Polanksi arrived in Brighton facing questions over how he would seek to position the party to respond to Labour's change of leadership under Burnham, amid signs the Greens' rise in national polls last year may have waned. He began his address by celebrating his party's surge in membership since his election as party leader a year ago, and electoral successes including the hundreds of councillors it gained in May's local elections in England.
In his half-hour address, he did not mention the Conservatives or Reform UK but launched repeated attacks on Labour's record in office. He criticised Labour for making "slogans without action" on the cost of living and vowed only his party would end "Rip Off Britain". And he was particularly critical of Labour's record on housing, where he accused the party of failing to take on the "powerful vested interests of developers and big landlords".
Instead, he urged the government to enact an "emergency brake" on private rents, under which they would be prevented from rising above the lowest of consumer price index measure of inflation, wage growth or 2%, for three years. He argued that pressure from the Greens in the face of government "inaction" had forced Burnham into calling an emergency Cobr meeting this summer amid record-breaking hot and dry temperatures. The Greens, he added would not "hesitate" to tax "extreme wealth", as he repeated the party's call for a so-called windfall tax on back profits - an issue where the government has faced pressure from unions.
"Now I get asked – isn't your job done? Isn't the government doing everything you wanted? "Through our sustained pressure – and our historic wins – we have held the worst instincts of the Labour government in check.
"And we have started to move them in the right direction. But we can't wait for them to get there on their own."
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