On the southern English coast of Brighton, the UK Green Party’s annual conference has kicked off, opening just 48 hours after the ruling Labour Party wrapped its own annual gathering. At the top of the agenda is a historic and deeply polarizing vote that could make the Greens the first major British political party to codify Zionism as a form of racism as official party policy, with the ballot scheduled to take place this coming Sunday.
Internal party sources and organizers backing the motion say the proposal is poised to pass, pointing to broad grassroots support across the party membership. The motion’s lead author, British-Palestinian activist Lubna Speitan, emphasized the urgency of confronting the ideological framework that she argues normalizes the displacement and marginalization of Palestinian people. Speitan noted that the motion was drafted collaboratively by Palestinians and a cross-faith, cross-community coalition of allies, with the goal of sparking broader conversation across British civil society, trade unions, and other political groups after the conference vote.
The proposal also calls for the establishment of a single democratic state across historic Palestine, with full equal rights for all ethnic and religious groups residing in the territory. Prominent Holocaust survivor and Jewish activist Stephen Kapos has publicly endorsed the measure, arguing that as a child survivor of the Nazi genocide, he views Zionism — both as an ideology and in its current practice — as an inherently harmful movement that lacks legitimacy and must be rejected.
The text of the motion clarifies that its target is the political ideology of Zionism, which it defines as an ethnonationalist project that established and maintains a Jewish state in historic Palestine through the exclusion and domination of non-Jewish populations, not Jewish people as a religious or ethnic group. “Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews,” the motion reads, adding that the material outcome of Zionist policy has been decades of ongoing dehumanization, displacement, dispossession, and disenfranchisement of Palestinian people. A supplementary booklet distributed by the motion’s backers frames the ethnonationalist core of Zionism as incompatible with global anti-racist principles, drawing comparisons to calls for ethno-exclusive states in Europe that would be universally rejected as white supremacist.
But despite this backing, the motion has drawn fierce condemnation from senior current and former figures within the Green Party itself. Caroline Lucas, the party’s long-serving former sole Member of Parliament, warned on Friday that the proposal carries severe risks of deep division within the party. Lucas argued that there is no universally accepted definition of Zionism, and that regardless of the proposers’ intentions, the motion could reasonably be interpreted as signaling that Jewish members and supporters are not welcome in the Green Party.
Adrian Ramsay, the party’s former co-leader, echoed these concerns, noting that adopting the motion would contradict the party’s 2024 general election manifesto position, which he ran on and that explicitly supports equal rights for both Israelis and Palestinians. Ramsay added that it would be fundamentally wrong for the party to adopt a policy that could be seen as rejecting the right of both peoples to statehood.
Even current Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, has called for substantial amendments to the motion ahead of Sunday’s vote, a position he laid out weeks before the conference. Polanski has pushed for language that explicitly safeguards Jewish members of the party, arguing that opponents of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and what he describes as genocide in Gaza should not face discrimination within the party even if they identify as Zionist.
Polanski also pushed back on the motion’s call for a single Palestinian state, arguing that it is paternalistic for a British political party to unilaterally dictate the final outcome of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. “My job as leader of the Green Party, the Green Party’s job, is to maintain justice and equality both for Palestinians and Israelis,” he stated. Last week, he clarified his nuanced position: if Zionism is defined by the displacement and harm inflicted on Palestinians, as it has been practiced, then it is unquestionably racist, but the lack of a clear, shared definition creates avoidable division within the party.
As delegates prepare to vote on both amendments and the full motion on Sunday, the Green Party’s leader used his opening address to the conference on Friday to pivot to domestic priorities that the party plans to center in the upcoming Holborn and St Pancras by-election, scheduled for 8 October, where Polanski is the party’s candidate. In his speech, Polanski focused on the ongoing UK cost of living crisis and the country’s deepening housing affordability crisis, urging Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s Labour government to implement a three-year emergency freeze on private rents — a policy Labour has already ruled out. Polanski argued that voting Green pushes the governing Labour Party leftward on key issues, from domestic policy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, telling delegates: “Vote Green and watch Labour move.”