ACFM Microdose: The Green Party
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2026
⏱️ 118 minutes
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Summary
[Audio error updated! Please refresh or re-download if correct episode isn’t playing.] Have the Greens got what it takes to become the main political vehicle of the radical left?
Following their Trip episode on Ecology, the ACFM crew take a closer look at Zack Polanski’s party as it nudges past Labour in the polls.
From the ’60s dream of ‘steady state economics’ to the anarcho-green convergence of ’90s rave culture, the Green tendency is mapped out by Nadia, Jem and Keir, with ideas from Playboy, Zack Goldsmith, David Icke and some sensible people too.
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Music by Matt Huxley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, listeners, this is Gem from the future. Well, the future of this recording, not the future of you listening, it's still the past of you listening. |
| 0:07.9 | But this is me recording a little snippet to insert here. I'm recording this on March 3rd. |
| 0:12.9 | We recorded the original episode you're listening to today about 12 days previously. And what happened in between was the Gorton and Denton by-election, |
| 0:24.0 | a special election held for the newly vacant parliamentary seat of Gordon and Denton in the |
| 0:30.5 | Manchester area, in the northwest of England, saw the Green Party take the seat. This is a historic |
| 0:36.0 | first. The Green Party have never won a by-election |
| 0:38.7 | like that before. They haven't won before in a place where they have not been building up |
| 0:43.4 | a political base around the local council for many years. This is the first parliamentary test |
| 0:50.1 | of the Greens' popularity since Zach Polanski became leader. |
| 1:02.4 | They had this fantastic candidate, a local woman in her mid-30s, who also happens to be a plumber and didn't go to university and mentioned this quite often, while also being clearly politically |
| 1:07.4 | very articulate, passionate and committed, kind of a dream candidate for them, |
| 1:11.4 | and it worked. This has obviously had seismic implications for thinking about the potential |
| 1:18.0 | future of the British left. And on the very day when I am recording this little snippet, |
| 1:22.9 | this is less than a week after that by-election result, we have seen the first ever national opinion poll |
| 1:29.0 | to put the Green Party ahead of the Labour Party. And only a couple of points behind Reform. It's a very |
| 1:36.4 | optimistic poll from YouGov suggesting that between them, Reform and the Tories have a significantly |
| 1:41.4 | lower share of national support than do Labour, nationalist parties, |
| 1:46.2 | Greens and Lib Dems combined. |
| 1:48.6 | And it really does now look like everything is to play for in terms of a possible scenario |
| 1:53.1 | in which the Greens could become the leading force of the political left, |
| 1:57.5 | at least within the English electoral arena. |
| 2:00.4 | So this only makes this podcast you're going to be listening to now |
... |
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