PoliticsJOE live event with Russell Warfield: The Green Socialist book launch

It's bloody terrifying. [laughter] Like I'm listening to Russell forgetting that I'm about to be a character in this story or a part of this story and you're listening and it's gripping because you're hearing everything and you're going yes that's true everything is falling apart and all of these things are broken and then you hear the solutions and you go yes we can do that and then he ends up by going and that's what Zach and the Green Party are going to do and you go oh god this is where we've got to jump in. I suppose where I balance it though is and I think Russell would agree with this and I think the book agrees with this is it's not all on me at all and actually whilst if someone just picked up the book you'd think this is a book about Zach it's not actually really at all and obviously a you know central part of it but it's the history of the Green Party and actually you can go right back to the beginning and certainly to for Natalie Bennett years I was really interested that you said in some ways do you get Jeremy Corbyn without Natalie Bennett and that was an interesting question I've heard you pose but actually what Natalie was doing in 2015 was pushing the Overton window, talking about refugees, talking about immigration, talking about a different kind of economic model. And uh I don't think Natalie would mind me saying she was, you know, ridiculed in the press, but she strongly pushed back. And then I think when Jeremy Corbyn came along, that had already started to lay some of the groundwork.

That's not to take away from, you know, how much work Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party then had to do to keep pushing the Overton window. [snorts] But I think no one ever occurs in a vacuum. So, I'd be terrified if I thought this was all on me and we're in a silo. But actually, what I recognize is this is part of a much bigger movement that's been going on for decades. It will go on after me.

It is also going on not just with me right now, but actually with loads of people around the country. And the final thing I'd say is the most hopeful part of my job all the time, whether it's nationally or for some reason, I'm spending lots of time in Hoben and St. Pancress today. You can chat how many times I say the constituency name in an evening. um is when I meet people who aren't particularly party political.

They just want to show me that they're getting done and they're there in a food bank. Uh I was there at one yesterday or they've got a community project going together. I was with a woman today who wants to run a women's empowerment program in Camden and she wants me to to go along and and just listen to everyone. And you see these projects just happening that people are spontaneously kind of creating because they look that everything is falling apart and go, I can't wait for a political party or a political leader. I'm just going to start doing things.

And I think it's that spirit that is embedded within the Green Party, too. And I don't think it's either or. I think when those two things work in alignment, a political party and a political movement, that's when we're unstoppable.

No, it's always a very strange emotion and I felt it yesterday where you are so in awe of the volunteers who are doing the work and you go this is exactly the community spirit that is the very best of Britain and the very best of a constituency and a very deep anger whether you go back to Thatcher or David Cameron and austerity that has created this and a conservative government that you know kept austerity going on for for a decade and a half and a Labor government that said okay we're going to continue with that and even now a prime minister Manley Bernham who says he's going to end neoliberalism but rules out rent controls has his chief of staff as a literal corporate lobbyist. We've seen today Tom Watson former deputy leader of the Labour party go and join Palunteer in one of the most shameless cynical acts that I think we've seen I was going to say this year but I forget we've also had Peter Mandelson this year. So much has happened this year that you sometimes forget how disastrous politics particularly the Labour party has been. And so, um, no, I don't like to see food banks pop up obviously, but the comm

I'm not running [laughter] them. I'm not pushing for them to reopen. But the, um, community spirit um, I think is incredible, but ultimately it shouldn't rely on the community to have to pick up the pieces. That's what government should be there to do. And actually, I think of something that the brilliant economist Mariana Masakato often says that it's not a government's job to fix market failures.

And it feels like we've often got into that trap where something goes wrong in society and the prime minister or minister goes, "Oh, as a government now, we've got to fix this." Should be a government's job to have vision and to incentivize and subsidize the people and communities that are doing good things and disincentivize or um tax uh or where relevant punish um organizations or corporations that doing bad things like polluting the planet. And it just feels like that kind of spirit has been lost from our politics.

No, it's definitely building on the shoulders of giants. And I think even when you look at previous uh Green Party Party political broadcasts, which you know uh some some people in the room, if they're particularly geeky, will do, they're available on YouTube, you can see the seeds of what we're doing right now, uh just presented in different ways. And so I think there was definitely a tonal shift in kind of how the Green Party presents its communications. But in terms of the narrative we're telling, in terms of uh policies, there literally isn't any difference at all. As you'll know, policy in the Green Party is made by the members.

So even if I wanted to make a big policy difference, that's just not possible within how the Green Party is structured. So it was very much taking what I've been there before and going, okay, what what can we center now and what can we do? And it occurred to me a journalist two days ago said to me, um, why do you keep focusing on Gaza in your contest in Hoben and St. Pancress? And whenever you're asked a question by a journalist, it's like your internal dialogue goes quick and then you see what you what comes out your mouth.

And my internal dialogue went, I actually haven't. Like I've been focusing really heavily on housing costs, on nationalizing temp's water, on being a local independent voice. I've hardly spoken about Gaza much at all during the Hoben and St. Pancress election. But what I actually said and I really believe is would that be so bad?

Like there are still on average a child is dying in Gaza every single day. We're still selling arms to Israel. And because of the Green Party and many campaigners, we finally pushed for Labor government to take some basic steps like um stop trading with illegal settlements, goods, and some services. I think most people are surprised that we're even trading with illegal settlements in the first place. Like the clues in the title, they're illegal.

But I think there's something cynical about taking small steps, apologizing, but then not taking the actual steps we need to do, which is stop selling weapons and arms licenses to the government that is killing people. And to answer your question, And to answer your question, I think that's always been at the heart of the Green Party. We've always been a party that cares about peace and justice around the world and cares about the hyper local and of course sees the climate crisis as kind of underpinning all of this. We know that the climate crisis and militarism uh interweaved. We know that the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis are interweaved, too.

We talked a lot about insulating homes for instance to lower people's bills and so this has always been at the heart of the Green Party. I think just these systemic holistic changes are quite complicated to explain to people and I think when you're communicating them in the past sometimes that message has just got missed and so people haven't really understood what the Green Party is about. What I love now is, you know, I I've been door-nocking uh today and pretty much every day for the for the last 10 days and people know exactly what the Green Party stands for now. And that's really really exciting. Um, and actually what I've been doing a little bit recently is centering on the climate crisis again because if everyone knows that we care about taxing the rich, if everyone knows we cares about care about inequality, I think we're starting to get a bit more of a hearing now on the doorsteps to say, well, let's also talking about the fact that nearly 3,000 people according to the UK health security agency have died this summer from the heat wave.

Uh, we know we possibly could have floods uh before the end of the year. And we know that the drought isn't over. The BBC reported yesterday, we need seven months, seven wet months to even have enough water supply to not have water scarcity. And when we finally pushed Andy Burnham to having a Cobra meeting, he said he was going to ban disposable barbecues. Like, of course, we don't support disposable barbecues, but I can't believe they actually sat down in a Cobra meeting and minuteed.

And at some point, someone from a comm's team went, "Okay, we've had this really high level security meeting, national security. Go out there and sell that. that we're going to ban disposable barbecues. I mean, it's actually something from the thick of it. Uh, if it wasn't so serious.

You know, I want to laugh at it, but the fact that people are literally dying from this, we need the government to step up and that's why we should send a green MP to parliament. Sorry, I had to say that bit at the end.

Yeah. So, when Gorton and Denton was called, um, lots of people messaged me within seconds saying, "You're going to stand, right? You're going to stand." Some being friends, some being volunteers, and many of them being journalists. And um I knew from second one that I wasn't gonna stand in Gorton and Denton. Partly because I'd met someone probably none of you have heard of called Hannah Spencer um when I was around Gorton and Denton and thought she's going to make a pretty amazing MP.

And the only reason why I didn't deny it for about two days was because I knew the moment I said no, the Green Party were going to be out the story. So, I just said, I'm neither going to confirm or deny and just let it run until I'd spoken to Hannah and until I'd made sure that um I'd done, you know, I have to be neutral as leader, but there's nothing wrong with encouraging people who you think is going to be good. [snorts] Um but uh what's interesting though is at that time once I'd said no, people said why not? And I said because I want to run as a London MP somewhere I have a strong connection to like Hackne or Hoben and St. Pancress.

And I named Hoben and St. Pancress over and over again because actually I've lived there more than Hackne over the last 20 years as is the experience of so many people who live in Camden Town. I would live in a flat for a year. Landlord puts a rent up have to move to another flat. Then at one point I had to move to Haringay for a year because I couldn't afford to live in Hoben St.

Pancress anymore. Moved back for another three years I think. Then I moved to Fitzrovia as a property guardian which is just on the other side of Hoben and St. Pancress. Anyway, the point being, I know those streets like the back of my hand.

And I think when you want to represent somewhere, uh, I don't think there's ever only one place you can represent. We hear this story from MPs or candidates. They're like, "This is the one place I could represent. It's the only place I know." I think as a Londoner, we have a bit more fluid sense of place than that in terms of there are places you work, there are places that you hang out or go to cafes or go to the theater. And Hovind and St.

Patrick is very much that place for me. It's somewhere I've lived. It's somewhere I've worked. It's somewhere even though I've not lived there for the past four years, I still feel a deep sense of connection with. The reason why um there's no other honest answer to this than timing.

So Kier Starma resigned and I think leadership is partly going, is this the perfect time for me to run as an MP? No, absolutely not. We've got a new prime minister. He's in his honeymoon period and the safe bet would go, this has been a safe Labor seat since 1983. Supposedly safe.

It's got a Labor council. We've got a Labour mayor and a Labor government, it's probably not the seat to go for. But I also think in politics, if you've got a strong case to make and you're the leader of a political party, rather than go to someone else, good luck making that strong case, you go, "This is a seat we absolutely can win. Like, it's really, really possible to win this." And as the campaign's gone on, it's never been more clear to me that what we're fighting for is worth it and we absolutely can win. The only gap between us winning and losing is mobilization on the ground.

There's um in politics, for any of you who have been canvasing, we've got a numbering system. One and two means probably going to vote green. Our number ones and twos are pretty high. Like uh I would say surprisingly high. Like I didn't know I had knocked on doors in there in the past year, so I didn't know what it was going to be, but lots of people in the constituency.

Woman yesterday I buzzed and she went, "Oh, you're at my door." And I said, "Yeah." She said, "I don't actually have time to speak to you, but I'm voting for you." And she basically said, "Go away." I was like, "Okay, great. If you're voting, that's fine. Next door." [snorts] Um, and so I'm being completely honest, the fours and fives, who are people who are not voting green, are probably about as even as our ones and twos. So, it is polarized, but they're not all necessarily voting Labor. Some of them are just saying, "I don't want to vote.

I'm sick of politics." The interesting bit is the number three, which means they're not quite sure how they're going to vote between Labor and Green. If I said to you that the other piles are here, threes are like up here. It is a tower block at the moment. And so the question is is in the next uh 19 days, can I get to as many doors as I can and have those conversations? And more importantly, can we get enough volunteers on the ground to have those conversations?

And the pitch is so easy.

Oh, no, no, not not the pitch for volunteers, but the um pitch to someone on the doorstep, which is if you vote green in this uh in this election, the worst case scenario is you get the Labour MP you might have voted for anyway, but they're just another Labor MP to add to a 400 majority that will just vote with a Labor government, no matter if they rule out nationalization of Temp's water, rule out rent controls, uh don't take the action that we need on Palestine. But if you vote green, if you don't get that scenario of the Labour MP, you could get another green MP in parliament who will speak for Hoben and St. Pancress who will push Andy Burnham every single day that I can and every single minister to push him to be a better government and to be um better for this country. And when you have that conversation with people on the doorsteps, genuinely 90% of people go, "That sounds pretty good. I'm going to vote green." So, it's just how many times can we have that conversation between now and election day and that will decide the election.

And that was also my pitch for volunteers. It was kind of hidden in there.

It would be phenomenal. And the interesting thing is so many people say, "Oh, it's a bit risky for you." I'm like, "Is it risky?" Like, on paper, we should not have been able to win the seat. The fact that we're seriously in contention shows what's happened over the past year and shows the growth of the Green Party. Sure. Are we running as strong as we were when we weren't Gon and Denton?

No, because Andy Burnham has arrived and largely taken our costume and taken a lot of our words. Great. I see that as success, too. In fact, I've heard Russell say, you don't get Andy Burnham without Zack Palansky's leadership.

Well, the party made a decision a conference uh two years ago that we were going to stand in every single seat. And I think that's largely because as soon as you start to open that door, you have local parties who can be under immense pressure sometimes to stand down when it's totally illogical. And Labour would often use that as a leverage point to point at people and say if you don't want Vtori or reform or whoever it might be, [snorts] you need to stand down. And I think it's so fundamentally undemocratic. So actually I have no desire to see kind of those um kind of tactical agreements or or um people standing down for each other.

I think actually what I'd much rather see and I think we have been seeing is the Green Party be the obvious left-wing vote, the obvious socialist vote that we have a platform of wealth taxes, of nationalization, of rent controls. And I think if another party differs with that platform, then they should stand and put their argument. And if they don't differ with that platform, I think when the Green Party has 230,000 members now, it seems odd or there'd have to be a very good reason why you're putting yourself with the same platform against a party that has 230,000 members. I felt that when we're a much smaller party, but now we're nearly as big as Labour. We don't know Labour's exact membership numbers, but we know they were going down and we were going up.

And so to we have more Young Greens than the entire Liberal Democrat membership across England and Wales. We have 40,000 young greens just um in um uh London alone. [snorts] So the fact that we have that much membership and much momentum thinks that you know I think with the obvious natural leftwing choice.

I thought it was going to be hypnotherapy, but this is much worse. [laughter]

They they didn't want to do Huskins,

It was an excellent campaign. [laughter] As you can see,

It was definitely the talking points that interested me. I'd never really been involved with politics. I'd kind of had a few dabbles and then this candidate didn't want to do Hustings. The local party said, "You like talking, do you want to go do My very first debate, literally first political event ever, was with Karma and Natalie Bennett [laughter] on either side of me, who was leader of the the Green Party at the time. Interestingly as well, Natalie would often not be there at the Hustings.

There was about 30 Hustings um that campaign, I think, because people were interested in Karen.

So Natalie wouldn't be there, but Shawn Bry would be there who goes on to be my or I go on to be her colleague at London Assembly. And that's when we got to know each other. And Natalie said recently, I'd never heard her say this before, that she knew from the first debate that I was in the wrong party because often we would talk about things and she said the way I would talk about things was so Green Party. And she during my debate would be like, "You're just in the wrong party." And um I think about this a lot because I did used to be embarrassed when someone used to bring up the Lib Dem question. I'd think of it, you know, it's just awkward and there's something shameful about it.

But actually I think we should solitary giggle about being ashamed ex and this is exactly what politics is right we want to convince people and change people's minds and I think there's far too much tribalism of you pick a football team and you have to stick with that football team for the rest of your life and I'm having those conversations in Hoben Stancress where I do knock on some doors and I get people who go love you love the Green Party I think I'm voting Labor and I'm like what I'm literally the candidate here and you've just said you love it and they're like oh I've only ever voted Labor. And so then you have that conversation and then you can shift them. But there's such an entrenched sense in politics of you vote for something all your life because your children and your grandchildren did. I loved um last year being in Brighton and I knocked on the door of a young person. They must have been in their early 20ies and they said they're voting green.

They said, "Oh, good. What's your main reason?" And they said, "Oh, my parents have always voted green." And I thought, "Oh, we're finally through into that shift." [laughter] Um but yeah um Natalie and Sean I think it was probably equally um would often make arguments where on my crib sheet it would be a different thing that was for Lib policy but then I'd be talking to them about it and they just make a really strong argument. I kind of go home to to my friends and housemates and go I think they're kind of right you know I think they're right on these things and it would be a magic story if I said you know the next day I turned up and went and joined in the Green Party. It actually took me about two years and it was a different candidate um called Steven Taylor who was a London assembly candidate for the Green Party and when I met him he said you're so obviously a Green and he bought me a conference ticket uh to the Green Party conference and said just go to one conference you'll find your tribe you'll realize you're in the right party. I didn't go to the conference again.

It would be a wonderful story if I said I did it. [laughter] Um, but actually I think the act of kindness and the kind of sheer sincerity of going you'd be at home there really made me think about the Green Party. And then the very final thing was I was obsessed with proportional representation. So this conversation's kind of come full circle. And hearing Natalie and Sean talk about proportional representation in a way that I'd never hear a green talk about before was the thing that made me go, "Oh, I can really care about proportional representation and be in the Green Party." I asked Natalie about that about, you know, five years later.

Why did you only talk about it then? and she said because we'd often get like 10 seconds of air time in the media and you can either talk about something that really matters to people that they care about or you can talk about this quite abstract thing. I don't think it's abstract anymore which is why the Green Party talk about it a lot more but I think in 2015 talking about proportional representation would be an instant kind of like I have no idea what you're talking about with most people. I think that conversation's changing. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I think there's definitely a much bigger group of people now who go democracy is fund fundamentally broken and as well as political reform, sorry, donation reform, media reform, we also badly need proportional representation.

I think they're um U-turning on it. I don't know, but they seem to have gone.

Um, I think there's several questions there. The first one is I do worry about reform. It would be dishonest to say otherwise. I think when I was originally thinking about running for leader of the Green Party and I spoke to someone about it that I trust and they said, "Not only should you think about it, you need to." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because I've got children and I think about the fact that Nigel Farage at the moment is going to be our prime minister." And they said, "Every time you're thinking about this decision, put a picture of Nigel Farage by your computer." I never did, by the way. Again, it'd be a better story if I did.

But he said, "Put a picture of Nigel Farage by your computer. And every time you're having any doubt about this, you need to run because a strong Green Party is the way to get K Starmmer to stop worrying about reform and start worrying about the Green Party, which coincidentally is the way to stop reform." Because I think the Labour Party and still under Andy Bernham think if you ape reform's rhetoric or if you just go a bit more further to the right on immigration in particular, we've still got Shabbana Mammud as home secretary then you know reform voters will be satisfied. But we also see what happens if you appease the right. They just go further right and it just shifts everything along. So, ironically, although Andy Burnham, and I accept the premise, does make things superficially harder for the Green Party, what it's done is stop uh temporarily Nigel Farage being prime minister because Andy Bernham is now talking about the right kind of rhetoric that I think can attract reform voters.

The question is though, will he follow that with action that physically improves people's material conditions rather than it just being about talk? So, I am worried about reform. I'm less worried about them because they seem to be imploding. And also I think we have a prime minister who is more capable than Kama was of changing things in the country that will make a better country. That means people are less likely to be angry and disillusioned and move to a party like reform.

That all being said uh the splitting the vote thing I think isn't on the Green Party. I think that is on the Labor Party. If the Labor Party cannot offer a real alternative that people want to vote for, then of course people should vote for the Green Party. And actually the vote splitters are the Labour Party because if they're saying they want to end neoliberalism, if they're saying that it's outrageous what's happening with our water companies, if they want to apologize over Gaza, if they want to in the most cynical move that I've seen of Andy Burnham so far, um leave rul um so we've got this new oil and gas field in the North Sea, Rosebank and Jackor. [snorts] They say Jack Door would create jobs, but it would only create 27 jobs.

Rosebank would be the cumulative emissions of 28 of the poorest income countries all put together. That decision was meant to be made this month. Magically, they've now delayed it till next month, just after the bi-election. And it's very obvious that they want to approve this oil and gas field or this gas field for Jackor. The only reason why they wouldn't approve it is if the Green Party, and it's very odd to talk about myself in the third, in fact, I won't talk about myself in the third person.

If I win this election, that is the thing that will stop Jack Door being approved. If I lose this election, the Labor government will go, we don't need to worry about the Green Party or that little climate crisis stuff. We'll just approve this oil field and Rosebank is probably coming along too or even just one of the other. And that is so deeply irresponsible and the exact route that they're going on. And so I don't think that's vote splitting at all.

If people want to see literally a livable planet, we have extracted more oil and gas across the planet than we can burn and still have a habitable planet. But Andy Bernham says he's just being pragmatic. There's nothing pragmatic about the heat waves we've seen this year. There's nothing pragmatic about the wildfires. We need to leave fossil fuels where they belong and that's in the ground.

Hang on. I was just doing the right of I just as soon as you say a labor line, it sets me off. But we need to invest in renewables. We could create so many jobs and actually

I think we have to talk around the media. I think uh we know that much of the media is owned by a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires many of whom don't even live in this country and who use a lot of the media as utter propaganda. In the same breath I'm aware [snorts] that I'm talking to a journalist. Um journalism is an incredible noble profession. Like there are people who say [laughter] but there are people around the world you know who are dying to to tell the truth literally dying um and so the state of the media in this country really really saddens me.

I sit opposite brilliant journalists sometimes who are asking me questions that are such utter triviality and I know how smart the person is, how considered they are and how interesting a conversation we could have if we actually got into the substance of it. But

But it feels so often just the tired tropes that kind of go round and round and round and round. I think the most obvious one was, you know, I did a speech last week at the wild summit. This is a coalition of nature organizations. And I started off the speech by talking about um our national security being at risk. the Labour government literally buried a report that had been written uh by the joint chiefs overhead of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ that talked about the fact that our whole food system is at risk of collapse and the government hid it because it was considered too scary for people.

So they just buried it last October. And so the case of my whole speech was to essentially throw down the gauntlet to Andy Burnham and say will you release that report? The first thing we need to know is the truth so then we can act on it. Not in a way that we hear the truth and we're paralyzed with fear, but until people know the truth, when we talk on the media, people aren't going to know the severity of which we're talking or the urgency of which we're talking if they don't know the basic facts. And I then did a media round and almost every question went, "Oh, you've started talking about the environment now.

Is this, you know, noticing that um you're having to shift to other things because of labor?" And I was like, if you've listened to me speak for more than 10 minutes in the last year, I'm literally always talking about the environment. And so it feels like it's a kind of cheap trope that's kind of got embedded in the lobby that the Green Party don't talk about the environment. Whereas, you know, I'm constantly talking about insulating homes. I'm constantly talking about protecting our green spaces. I'm constantly talking about reducing emissions and taking on corporations.

And so, um, I do think there's two things going on. One, just sometimes lazy media, which means they're not even being Mavelian about it. They're just not doing the work. But then I do think

and but I do think there is something more sinister at heart and I really felt this when I started to talk uh in light of Jason Arday's death about media regulations and the way that they came for me in a way that I've not experienced in the year of leadership and I've experienced a lot of crap. Um, sitting down with Jeremy Corbyn was quite an emotive experience. Just looking someone in the eyes and knowing he's someone who understands how it feels every single day, like really understands how it feels. But it wasn't until I started talking about media regulation that it all stepped up. You know, this kind of idea that I was some crazed authoritarian when actually I think the majority of people in this country, I would imagine, agree that media should be regulated, which doesn't mean that we should tell people what to say.

It doesn't mean politicians should be shouldn't be scrutinized. In fact, quite the opposite. Politicians should be scrutinized, but they should be scrutinized fairly. And the same people who donate to political parties shouldn't be the same people who run TV channels, GB News. Um, and and just making sure that we have a fair, transparent, and robust system.

But when I said it, just the spectator, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, just obsessive for days and days and days. And so what I think it takes

That's so unlike them. But it's really going to require Labor to grow a backbone or grow a spine because the Green Party aren't going to be doing this. You aren't going to be able to do it alone. And Labour should see, you know, political donation is another example. Uh I think Stella Cesy put in an amendment to say political donation should be capped at £500,000.

Far too much, but that was the cap. Even that was too much for the Labor government. They thought, "Oh no, we can't cap it at that." And then just a few days later, we find out the reform have taken a 76 million pound donation. And now it's too late. Labor need to recognize what is coming down the tracks not just in their own self-interest but actually to protect democracy in this country.

so it's interesting actually uh last weekend or the weekend before I was due to go to um Amsterdam where we were going to have a European Greens moment where I was going to lead a climate march of many parties across Europe in fact some around the world to have this real kind of significant moment of saying this is the moment for the climate crisis and obviously when the bi-election was called I was then dragged out of that march it was a real shame but [snorts] one of the European parties I won't name who because I don't necessarily have permission but they showed me that in their election headquarters, they put a picture up of me that said, "What would Zach do?" And they said during their election to remind them to keep being bold, to keep talking about the cost of living and lowering bills that they've put the Green Party of England and Wales kind of at the center of their campaign, which I it was just a beautiful moment to go, "Wow, if that's inspiring campaigns around the world, that's exactly where I want to be." We know

Oh. Uh, I just think we're different personalities and I think being the mayor of a city is very different to being the leader of a national party or wanting to to run in a constituency. That being said, you know, I've had contact with his team. We've uh exchanged ideas um quite a lot, video ideas, kind of uh campaigning ideas. I think Zoran Mdan is incredible.

Um I think um it's a push for me to say I'm doing the same thing Man is doing because I just think we're different people. Um, and then yeah, that's probably my answer.

And good luck with your thesis. I should have started there.

Yeah, I think first of all, we have to be honest that the North Sea is not really a political conversation. It's a geological conversation. We've already extracted the vast majority of the reserves. So when politicians tell oil and gas workers in that area, this is going to carry on for decades or however long, they're actually lying to them, and that's just kicking the the can down the road. I think what we needed to be doing decades ago was working with the trade unions and workers.

There is amazing skills in those communities where people their livelihoods, their families, and the entire network is based on those jobs to actually go what does co-production and codees look like for the jobs of the future. whether that's in solar panels, whether it's in wind turbines, whether it's in a tidle. Now, the other opportunity here, and I spoke recently with um Joseph Stiglets, a Nobel economist, is about what does British manufacturing look like if we're no reli not relying on unethical supply chains around the world, or certainly not on an increasingly uh unpredictable American president, but actually we start to go, what does our own resilience look like? A lot of the time when there's supply, you know, shocks uh around Europe, around the world, we're having the same shocks here because often they're related to the climate crisis. So actually again for our national security, we need to be having this whole kind of uh reset moment in terms of how do we build those industries?

But we have to do it with the workers otherwise it just creates further polarization.

Uh yes. I think as long as you're making sure that you're doing it and you're doing it in a sustainable way that's looking at green industries and I think that's the key is that it can't be just you know greenwash but actually we are going to need nationalized steel because we're going to need to b build the the railway lines the wind turbines etc. And the only way you can do that ethically and create jobs is to do this. Now what I love about the question is it can all sound very pessimistic everything's gone wrong but I see it as the opposite. If we had a society where we didn't have inequality, this would be a really tough ask to go, we're gonna have to restructure everything to tackle the climate crisis.

But actually, we've got a climate crisis and we've got an inequality crisis. So, when you combine these two things together, you can have a transformative vision of what society looks like where the workers are included. In fact, they're the main characters in this. And a lot of these jobs can be in the public sector so they can be in trade unions, paid properly, and treated with dignity and care at work, too.

I disagree.

So, I don't know if I mentioned I've been doornocking a lot recently in Hovveness and Pancress. [laughter] Um, but actually, I'd say to anyone if ever you're feeling pessimistic about the state of society, go doornocking in your community because so often you have uh they're not always deep conversations. A lot of the time someone's watching the baby or about to watch Coronation Street, but every so often you get someone who goes, I'm not that interested in politics or I'm not, you know, this isn't really for me. And you just push gently and and kind of, oh, why are you not interested or what is it you care about? And you can very quickly get into some very deep conversations where you realize how compassionate people are, how much they want to change things, how much they want to tackle inequality.

They just often haven't been given the route or the resources or have the space and time to do it because they're struggling themselves to put food on the table or heat in the homes which is exactly where ecosocialism comes to tie back to the last question. I think until people are you know have their own means of production or they're able to create and make a different change for their lives or for their families lives then we're just going to be caught in this quite passive ambivalent uh society that successive governments have tried to push people into. When someone wants change they're told they're being idealistic. it's not realistic or it's not credible. And I think that's one of the biggest tools the right has had is that kind of propaganda to tell people we don't deserve better or we can't make better happen.

But you only need to talk to someone for a few moments before you can see the glint in their eye that they recognize we can demand better and we can make better happen. And for all that I can complain about the Reform Party and certainly this Labor government, the fact that people care in this country every time that you do kind of policy focus groups or policy um polling, the Green Party policies almost always come out on top. the vast majority of our policies. The only reason why people haven't voted green in the past is because they think we can't win. And that's why if people vote green on October the 8th, we can win in Hobon Pancress.