The UK’s ruling Labour Party has formally severed collaborative governing ties with the Green Party across 11 local authorities in England, in direct response to a landmark policy passed by the Greens at their October annual party conference that labels Zionism as a form of racism. The vote by Green activists made the party the first major UK political group to formally adopt that stance, alongside a policy shift backing a single, inclusive democratic Palestinian state with equal rights for all ethnic and religious communities, replacing the longstanding two-state solution framework that has dominated mainstream UK political discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Labour Party chair Bridget Phillipson laid out the party’s firm position in an official statement, emphasizing that the Green motion on Zionism had crossed an unnegotiable moral boundary. “No local power-sharing arrangement can ever justify abandoning the moral duty we hold to stand up for every member of our communities and the shared anti-racist values that define our party,” Phillipson stated. “We cannot collaborate at any level of governance with a party that endorses this divisive, discriminatory policy.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham had previously publicly denounced the Green policy as antisemitic shortly after it was passed last month.
The 11 councils where all joint working agreements with Greens will immediately cease are Arun, Derbyshire Dales, Havant, Lewes, Sheffield, Stafford, Warwick, Wealden, West Devon, and West Suffolk. Labour noted that six local Green council groups, based in Broadland, Monmouthshire, North Somerset, Rother, West Oxfordshire, and West Sussex, have already publicly rejected the national party’s new motion, a move that Phillipson’s team described as a “right and appropriate” stance. The party added that it was “disappointed” other local Green branches had declined to disavow the policy as required under Labour’s terms for continued collaboration, and called on the Green Party’s national leadership to formally rescind the motion entirely.
In an official response, the Green Party pushed back against Labour’s move, arguing that cross-party local partnerships between Greens, Labour, independents, and Liberal Democrats have long delivered stable, effective local governance, protected critical public services, and delivered tangible improvements for residents across the country. The party accused Labour leadership of issuing arbitrary ultimatums that undermined the judgment of their own local elected representatives, disrespected the will of local voters who had backed cross-party collaborative governance, and disrupted long-running successful community-focused initiatives.
Zack Polanski, the Jewish deputy leader of the Green Party, warned on Monday that Labour’s decision to end local power-sharing deals would ultimately backfire on the ruling party. “Our party is focused on delivering policies to tax billionaires, tackle the accelerating climate crisis, and end arms sales that are enabling ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Polanski said. “Labour’s choice to disrupt local public services to enforce their policy of supporting that genocide at the local level lays bare the true priorities of Andy Burnham and his administration.” The Green Party had previously hit back at Burnham’s earlier criticism of the motion, stating that it would refuse to take lectures on antisemitism from a government that continues to supply military hardware to the state of Israel.