Going Green

“And the X on your sheet means definitely don’t knock on the door, because you know how volatile society is at the moment!” 

It’s a languid Thursday afternoon in Hove and Millie, a slightly scatty Green Party activist, is preparing us for an afternoon of canvassing. In our mission to get a councillor elected in the backyard of Technology Minister Peter Kyle, we are to avoid conversations about bin collections and NATO. “Next time they’re at the ballot box,” she says, “we want them to think: remember that friendly person from the Green Party?”

Next to us is a woman who looks like she’s spent too long around healing crystals, wearing a badge that reads: What if I were trans? Any doubt on our part is eased by the fact that she has brought along her teenage son. He is an avid listener to The Rest of Politics and carries the solemn and anxious air of an exploited child actor. “I just don’t feel comfortable disagreeing with someone in their own space,” he says, refusing to go into an ominous block of flats. Into this world we have come to spread Zack Polanski’s message of hope.

There are 230,000 members of the Green Party and earlier that day on the train down to Hove to impersonate one, it struck me that I had no real understanding of what these people actually believed. Were an election to be held tomorrow, some pollsters have suggested a majority of people under 40 would vote for the party. In 2029, it is not unfeasible that they will form the more lurid colours of a rainbow parliamentary pact against Reform. This will be led not by someone who is a politician, but a sort of patron saint for the various casualties and lost causes that are now dotted around the country in parents’ bedrooms, HMOs and canal boats. 

In theory, there was a veritable feast of intellectuals and talking heads from which to cobble together a response to this dilemma of the door. John “the thinker” Merrick had thrown his flat cap into the Green ring alongside Aaron Bastani, Grace Bakeley and Gary Stevenson. The gist of all their stratagems was that normal, everyday people had not only forgotten the joys of socialism, they were living in a state of suspended shock. They needed to be reintegrated back into normality through community gardening and anti-racism. If the Green Party were to deliver an effective ground game, they would have to lay off the heavy stuff about late stage capitalism, and try to spark a bit of joy in our depressive realm. 

By a table of campaign literature, a posse of ageing twinks and veteran Trots were gearing up to hit the streets

Upon arriving, any anxiety I had about standing out from the crowd was abated, for the living room of our makeshift HQ was teeming with strange men. No one bothered to ask who I was or why I was there. Name dropping John Merrick or the New Left Review got me nowhere. The only local knowledge provided to me — and presumably the fait accompli for the afternoon’s proceedings — was that the local MP Peter Kyle was a member of Labour Friends of Israel. Indeed, the only discernible topic of conversation seemed to be fighting zionism and the flowery attire of Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the former Labour parliamentarian whose only notable contributions to the chamber consisted of stealing The Mace and telling the house he was HIV-positive.

By a table of campaign literature, a posse of ageing twinks and veteran Trots were gearing up to hit the streets. A horrible thought struck me that I might end up canvassing with the sort of people who had driven themselves to poverty and madness by devoting their entire life to the factional squabbling of “the left.” I pictured an afternoon arguing about Momentum with the Hove home-owners of the soft left, forced to orbit the grisly milieu of men who read the Socialist Worker over a Wetherspoons breakfast and wax lyrical about the first time they saw Billy Bragg. 

And so I gravitated to the crystal shop woman and her dour son. We were surely more feasible receptacles of hope. Beyond us lay Hove — home to Fatboy Slim and Angela Rayner in their million-pound Regency apartments. But this world was not exactly immune to the unsettling ennui of modern England. In the park, I had already spotted a sinister sign warning us not to feed the pigeons because of Bird Flu. The locals had those stricken faces now familiar to any English high street. If I were going to do this, I felt some inexplicable duty to the marketplace of ideas in our ancient democracy to at least have a proper stab at it. 

The British people, as the latest trendy polling tells us, want “system change” but on the door they will only talk about things like potholes and the eccentric — pet concerns that govern their strange little worlds. The art of canvassing, I soon discovered, was to try to link these two things, no matter how implausible the stretch. 

Our first doorstep neatly demonstrated this exciting new frontier in British democracy. An obsequious middle-aged man in rimmed glasses, who looked like he was willing to go along with anything, informed us his wife was unavailable, as if eager to imply it was she who made all the important decisions. Over the weekend at an anti-racism demo in Brighton, a policeman had accidentally trodden on her foot and broken it. This was the reason why he was now considering swapping his vote from Labour to Green, the logic of which we dared not question as we thanked him for his support. 

“I’m sorry but I’ve just been cleaning the toilet,” said a weathered old matron donning a pair of marigolds at the next door. Immediately, I sensed trouble. To our horror, she had previously voted for the party, only for them to end up going “too green”. Her husband had started tripping on the overgrown vegetation. Now, she informed us, the Albanians were running the town.

I pulled out my best Gary Stevenson, and adopted a sort of Novara Media mockney: “well the country is still suffering from a decade of austerity. And unlike the Labour Party, we actually have a plan to fund public services properly with a wealth tax”. The marigold woman was nodding along. God this was easy. But nothing could quite convince her to go Green again. There were autistic children identifying as cats she told us, and now the Nigerians were running the local loony bin. England was a world turned upside down. “Well, we’re offering change, but perhaps not the change you’re looking for.” said Millie, keen to end the conversation and move on.

I glimpsed a bulky figure in a well worn suit, looking like someone who had been dragged in off the streets to the cruel amusement of bored teenagers at a house party

Back at HQ, people were pottering about the kitchen and garden trying to look busy. More young people had turned up — a medley of vintage football shirts and mentally fragile art students. Then through the crowd, I glimpsed an out-of-place figure in a well worn suit, looking like a lonely commuter who had been dragged in off the streets to the cruel amusement of bored teenagers at a house party who “felt like doing something a bit random.”

It was Zack Polanski. He took to the stage and appeared to say “erection” instead of election. Everyone giggled uncontrollably, a curious precursor to what turned into a grim call to arms: a genocide facilitated by the Labour Party, the loss of trans rights. And then it was time for a photo. “Turn around and say hello to Fabian!”. Greeeeeennnnn, the crowd said, grinning at the camera. I tried to escape. “I love you Zack!” said a sinister thirty-something with a wispy moustache. Then somehow, having taken a wrong turn, I was spat out in front of the man himself. 

Despite his smile, he had a sad, moping face. “Zack,” I said softly, trying not to startle him. “I’ve been hitting the doors and I’ve been thinking about your message of hope. Is there a scene, a part of England you recall that best articulates what this all means?” 

“The anti-racism demo last week in Brighton,” he said with a suspicious promptness. But he seemed disappointed by his own answer. His eyes started to search for other things, and suddenly it all unfolded before me: the lost years spent acting in provincial schools, Harley Street, the evenings brooding on his canal boat. Somewhere along the way, things had gotten out of hand, and now he was the leader of the third biggest political party in a country on the brink of tearing itself apart. “And then of course, there’s always things like solar panels on people’s homes, people volunteering at foodbanks, things like that”. We both pondered this silently, and then I thanked him and left him alone. 

Outside, one of the ageing twinks had donned a pair of sunglasses in a bid to add authority to his assumed role as one of Polanski’s heavies. “Oh pleaasseeee, don’t go down there,” he winced. “There’s some people trying to cause trouble.” I strode forth to meet the troublemakers. A man was wearing a billboard depicting a quote by Joseph Goebbels set against a scene from Kristallnacht. Next to him, a gaggle of women who resembled Miriam Margoyles, their skin presumably aged and tanned by decades of nudism and litter picking. 

They were the scions of the old local Green Party. They had known Caroline Lucas who had “betrayed them” by refusing to sufficiently engage with the Jewish community after October 7th. The party, the country, even Hove itself had now lost its innocence. “What is he saying in there?” demanded the man with the Joseph Goebbels billboard. I glanced back into the semi’s murky windows trying to remember. “He’s talking about solar panels, foodbanks, trans rights and genocide. That sort of thing,” I said. “Oh, and hope.” 

• names have been changed