𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In just a matter of days, something unthinkable just a few years ago may be about to happen. The Green Party could be on the cusp of winning a by-election, buoyed along by a wave of popularity that has seen its leader, Zack Polanski, surging in the polls. Gorton and Denton are awash with fluorescent green posters, as their candidate – the plain-speaking Hannah Spencer – takes the fight to Reform UK, and may end up sapping votes in their thousands from Labour in what could mark the first parliamentary by-election win in the resurgent party’s history.

But what exactly does the party stand for? Beyond the reassuring abstractions about saving the planet, the Green manifesto is a treasure trove of policies ranging from the ambitious to the somewhat bizarre. Here are five that deserve closer scrutiny.

Would any list of Green Party pledges be complete without a dig at the wealth tax? Polanski’s posse proposes an annual wealth tax of 1% on assets valued above £ 10 million and 2% on those valued at more than £ 1 billion. On paper (recycled of course) it sounds reasonable enough – get the super rich to fork out more and build a fairer society whilst we’re at it.

The unfortunate problem is that the effectiveness of wealth taxes tends not to work. Countries that have brought one in fast find they are out of millionaires to fleece, as they swiftly vacate the premises. Wealth is extremely difficult to value and even harder to tax – art, property, offshore holdings, all require a veritable legion of valuers and auditors.

The very rich tend to employ rather good accountants. Meanwhile, the merely affluent – your successful small business owner or your pensioner sat in a home that has appreciated rather well, risking being caught in the net. Soaking the rich in a deluge of new taxes sounds splendid until you discover the rich have already left the bath.

The Greens want an immediate end to badger culling, despite bovine tuberculosis costing the farming industry a fortune each year. Their position, like many of those who want to protect the rural menace, is that only a small proportion of bTB cases can be linked to badgers, and thus a cull is cruel and ineffective.

Except the question is not whether badgers cause most bTB – clearly cattle-to-cattle transmission is the primary vector – but whether removing infected badgers from the equation helps control the disease in problem areas. The scientific evidence is mixed, but farmers in high-risk zones tend to support culling because they see results quite quickly.

Campaigners’ opposition to the cull tends to try and redirect concerned people to voice their support for vaccination programmes, which sound lovely but require catching the badgers first, an endeavour that makes herding cats look straightforward. One suspects this policy owes more to the adorable nature of badgers than to hard-headed agricultural economics. If bTB were spread by rats or spiders, I doubt the Greens would be quite so protective.

Raising the Minimum Wage to £15

A £15 minimum wage sounds generous, and these days politicians seem utterly hell-bent on slamming it up each budget. And of course, their argument is quite simple and electorally beneficial: a large chunk of their voters are young people who want higher wages.

Workers deserve a living wage, and the costs to small businesses will be offset by reducing National Insurance payments, the Greens profess. Except it will not, and does not, work that way. Small businesses operate on increasingly thin margins. A corner shop, a family-run cafe, a village pub – these are not Amazon warehouses with deep pockets. A sudden leap in labour costs would force many to cut staff, reduce hours, or close entirely.

We are already seeing the impact of Labour’s silly attacks on businesses, with a hike in national insurance and the minimum wage. The policy, regrettably, is well-intentioned economic illiteracy.

This is the policy that truly separates the Greens from every other mainstream party, providing them perhaps with a hill to mount a support campaign on. The Greens want to end the prohibition of drugs and create a system of legal regulation for all sorts of substances, including heroin and cocaine.

Their leader, Zack Polanski, backs legalising all drugs, arguing the war on drugs has failed, and a public health approach is needed. Now, it cannot really be denied that a serious debate needs to be had about how we deal with the mass availability of drugs. And of course, it can be argued that many drugs, such as marijuana, have been effectively decriminalised due to a lacklustre policing system, which sees most possessors let off with a warning.

But is the solution really over-the-counter smack? It is a radical departure from current policy and one that raises enormous questions. Who regulates purity? What happens when legal supply fuels demand? How do you prevent organised crime from simply undercutting legal prices? The Greens believe this will create a more “inclusive” society. Most voters, one suspects, would prefer a society where Class A drugs remain illegal.

A ‘Holiday Tax’ on Frequent Fliers

The Greens want a frequent flyer levy, a tax that slaps an extra charge on top of your normal journeys, as well as a ban that stops domestic flights altogether. The logic is that 15% of people take 70% of flights, and those people tend to be wealthy; therefore, tax them more.

It is the aviation equivalent of a wealth tax and suffers from similar problems. For a start, how do you track it? A national flight database? Linking passenger records across airlines? The administrative burden would be enormous and easily gamed – fly via different booking systems, use family members’ names, take indirect routes.

More fundamentally, it punishes precisely the people Britain needs: businesspeople building trade relationships, entrepreneurs exploring new markets, families with relatives abroad. A consultant flying to New York four times a year for work would be clobbered. Meanwhile, the genuinely wealthy would simply absorb the cost or fly private. Like most Green policies, it sounds fair until you think about it for more than five minutes.

A quick look at any poll will show you that the Greens are on the rise. Voters, furious with Labour, unimpressed by the Conservatives and repulsed by Reform, are increasingly looking for parties that can offer something new.

But new doesn’t always mean good. Scratch beneath the eco-friendly surface and you find policies that range from the economically dubious to the actively strange. Come what may, if the Greens win Gorton and Denton, it will be a protest vote of historic proportions. But voters tempted to send that message might want to ask themselves: Do I actually want these policies enacted? Or am I just angry at Sir Keir Starmer?

Because if it is the latter, there are less consequential ways to make your point.