Zack Polanski Interview: Growing, Growing, Gone...?
The newly-elected Green leader tells the Byline Podcast that Keir Starmer's "absurd" focus on GDP threatens the natural world on which we all depend
New Green Party leader Zack Polanski has outlined a radical alternative to the government’s stuttering growth agenda, in a forthright and wide-ranging interview with the Byline Podcast.
Polanski took aim at Sir Keir Starmer’s favoured measure of success, GDP, which is rising annually by just over one per cent, despite the Prime Minister’s pledge to make the UK the fastest growing economy among industrially developed G7 nations.
“He's failing on a bad measure, and he doesn't have a plan to tackle it,” said the ‘eco-populist’, who was elected by party members with a crushing 85% majority against joint rivals Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay.
Polanski called the Government’s focus on GDP “absurd”, describing it as “a terrible way to measure the health and wellbeing of a country. Really, we should be looking at lots of other measures. How happy are people? What's their mental health like? Have we tackled the gender pay gap, the disability pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap?.”
At the same time he insisted: “I don't mind things growing as long as it’s within ecological boundaries.
“I think if a market wants to make sure that they're making more money, that's all fine. That shouldn't be the focus, though, of a government - and that shouldn't be the focus of our politicians and parliament when we're thinking about health and wellbeing.”
Polanski said ministers should be more aware of the depletion of natural resources, insisting that, “you must improve people's lives and protect nature. We live in one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, but not go down this absurd route of saying economic growth at all costs.
“We have to protect biodiversity, because if we don't have nature, we don't have anything. If nature collapses, we lose everything.”
The Green Party is committed to expanding house building, having pledged 150,000 new homes a year, but Polanski said these would be focussed on brownfield sites rather than greenfield developments. With a Green government, there would also be an emphasis on social housing, rather than private estates.
Polanksi said: “What sticks in the throat is the Government often shout this idea of ‘nimbyism’ at the Green Party or anyone on the left. Whereas actually, what we're saying is that property developers - the same property developers who donate to the Labour Party and the Conservative Party - want to project these narratives of nimbyism because what they want to do is to be able to destroy our Greenbelt, to be able to destroy nature [and] not pick up the consequences.
“We know there's an immense amount of land banking going on as they try and take the profits from that, rather than actually creating the homes that people need. So this all points to all the themes that are happening in the country right now, which is corporations and the super rich destroying our environment, destroying our democracy and destroying our communities. None of these are natural things to happen. These are all the results of political choices and vested interests.”
On the podcast, Polanski also discusses his attitude to his trip to the TUC Conference, Nato, Gaza and his controversial deputy Mothin Ali. You can listen to the full episode here.