Nick Breeze speaks to former Green Party Leader and UK Peer, Baroness Natalie Bennett.
The FT reported on the 9th March 2026:
“The party’s leader Zack Polanski has transformed the image of the party from a cuddly environmental campaign group into a combative leftwing populist political vehicle that advocates for working people against the ultra-wealthy.” Anna Gross
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In this episode, Nick Breeze asks Baroness Natalie Bennett whether the Green Party has really “lurched to the far left” or if that label reflects lazy media stereotypes rather than a genuine ideological shift. Bennett argues that Green policies are member‑driven and broadly unchanged, and that the current focus on issues like welfare, inequality and public services is part of a long‑standing attempt to link ecological limits with social justice
“Policy has not changed. Zac is doing an enormous job of making us popular, of making us being heard. That’s the real change. The actual policies haven’t changed at all.”
Natalie Bennett – Author of Change Everything
The conversation probes headline proposals such as a wealth tax on very high assets, which critics frame as radical redistribution, and asks how Bennett connects these to climate and planetary boundaries. Immigration and refugee policy also comes under scrutiny, including claims about “open borders”, the UK’s legal responsibilities, and whether expanded rights for migrants sit comfortably within a green agenda.
Finally, the discussion turns to surging Green membership, the party’s positioning against Reform, and a more confrontational stance on the UK–US relationship and NATO. Throughout, Breeze tests whether this evolving platform strengthens or dilutes the Greens’ environmental core.
“If you ask me to sum up green political philosophy in one sentence, I start from there’s enough resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life, for us to look after climate and nature, if we share them out fairly.”
Natalie Bennett – UK Green Party Peer
Baroness Natalie Bennett Interview Transcript
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
Natalie, it’s great to see you. Thank you very much for taking the time. I want to start just by a bit of framing.
There’s an article in the newspapers yesterday, and it’s quoting the party’s leader, Zak Polanski, has transformed the image of the party from a cuddly environmental campaign group into a combative left-wing populist political vehicle that advocates for working people against the ultra-wealthy. Have the Greens replaced environmental politics for a far-left agenda, as claimed by Labour commentators and even the defeated reform candidates in the Gordon Denton by-election?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Well, first of all, it’s lovely to be back with you, Nick. Great to be talking to you again. And I’m feeling an enormous sense of deja vu, because when I was elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in 2012, there were headlines that said, she’s taking the party to the left.
She’s talking about social things, not about whales and trees. And pretty well every Green Party autumn conference when in those days just felt obliged to cover us, the same headline came out, or she’s decided to take a turn to the left and she’s talking about social things. So there’s a bit of media laziness, stereotyping going on here.
They have a particular picture of what parties are like. They’re always looking to get a photo of a Tory with a champagne glass in their hand. They want a Lib Dem wearing sandals.
They’d possibly like a cloth cap for a Labour gut person. There’s a media picture in their head. And the reality, of course, is policy in the Green Party is made by the members.
Policy has not changed. Zac is doing an enormous job of making us popular, of making us being heard. That’s the real change.
The actual policies haven’t changed at all. And you’ll know, as I spoke to you about my book, Change Everything, the first chapter of that is about welfare policy, about universal basic income, and makes the thesis that what we need is system change, not climate change. It’s not a matter of taking our current system and applying some green, washing some green technology to it.
We have to change the system to live within the physical limits of this one fragile planet.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
One policy that’s getting a lot of attention is this idea of a 1% wealth tax on assets over 10 million and 2% over a billion. And it’s projected to raise quite significant amounts of money for public services. But critics are calling this a far left redistribution of wealth, unrelated to the environment.
Can you make connections of how these things link back and make a more complete story?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Absolutely. And I spent a great deal of time and still do talk about a brilliant book that came out called The Spirit Level. And that talks about the fact how in more equal societies, everybody, even the richest 10% of people are better off.
And if you go back into my time and articles that I was writing, things I was saying to the media, the need to reduce inequality has always been absolutely centrally understood. And the way I explain this, and again, this is in Change Everything, the book, is that if you think about the UK, we’re using our share of three planets every year, but we have to get back to one planet living fast. But if you just say to the whole of society across the UK, right, everyone cut back by two thirds, what that does is that immediately literally leaves lots of dead.
The people who are already skipping meals because they can’t afford to buy the food, people switching the heating off in winter and shivering because they can’t afford to pay the bill. Those people do not need to cut back. They cannot cut back.
In fact, they need more resources, 4.5 million children living in poverty. And that means that the people at the financial top of society, the 1%, the 0.1% need to pay more back into society. And again, as I say in the book, those people have got that wealth from society.
If you put Elon Musk on a desert island, and he would not be making any money at all. All of that wealth is generated through the assets of society, you know, our fibre optic systems installed by society, our roads, our policing, our hospitals. You have customers, they have to live, they have to live in society, they need to go to school, etc.
So this is a rebalancing that’s both good for society, good for the environment, because those are the people consuming enormous amounts of stuff, you know, private jets is the very obvious symbol of this. And it also means then that we have enough. I’m sure you know, Nick, Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth, that’s the foundation, you know, some of the foundational thinking of Greens around the world, not just in the UK.
And that means we have to live within the physical limits of this fragile planet while making sure everyone has enough. And that’s the ring of the doughnut. And that’s where the Green Party’s always wanted to get.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
One issue is that as you gain popularity, everyone’s saying, ah, now we’ve got to hold the Green Party to more scrutiny. One issue where this really is important is on immigration, because it’s such a contentious issue in the UK. And the Green Party has quite bold policy announcements on this, which are divisive.
How do you win this argument for more working rights for undocumented migrants, looking after migrants, opening up the borders as opposed to closing them down? How do you win that argument?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
For the avoidance of doubt, and I’m sure you realise this, Nick, but you know, for any listeners, don’t believe everything you read in the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph. Not everything they say is actually true about Green Party policy. So open borders is not our policy.
One of the things that makes this difficult, but I think is also a demonstration of change politics, is we have a long-term vision of what the world should look like. And in the long-term vision of what the world should look like, people should be able to move around freely. But that’s a long-term vision of a very different world.
Where we are now is we want an orderly, safe system. We want to stop the boats just as much as everybody else does. People are not risking their lives getting across the Channel.
But the reason why they’re doing that is because there are not the legal routes available that they can simply go to a British consulate, apply. Maybe they served us, worked with us in Afghanistan, and their lives are seriously at risk because of that. Maybe they come from Sudan, and they’re fleeing persecution there, and they’re seeking a safe haven.
All of those things are something Britain has always done. We have a very proud history of that. I can go back to, I used to live in Somers Town, and anyone who knows that area, the Somers Town coffeehouse, that’s where the Huguenot refugees from France used to have their coffee way, way back in the day.
So this is something that’s always happened. What we want to do is an orderly, safe process that accepts a reasonable number of refugees. People don’t realise, you know, there’s a great deal of misinformation.
The last figure I saw is per head of population, we are ranked 16th for welcoming refugees among European countries. So we should be taking our fair share. We should be caring for people.
Many of them have found themselves in the situation they are because of British foreign policy in the past, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. And so we have a particular responsibility to be welcoming those people. And I also think something that we need to focus on is, you know, once they’re here, we don’t want to lock them up in hotels, leave them with nothing to do either.
We want them to have the right to work, to contribute to our society. And that’s something that many other countries around the world already do without any drama at all. And that would make so much more sense than taking engineers and doctors and qualified people, people who’ve got real skills, energy and talents, and making them sit around and do nothing because our system is so faulty and the Home Office is so hostile.
Often sit around for years for no reason at all.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
There’s a lot of news about the record numbers of people joining the Green Party and that the membership is swelling. And you’ve already said that the Green Party’s policies are set by the members. We tend to think that reformers have got the narrative, but do you think the Green Party are counterbalancing reform in terms of the sort of polar opposite perspective on these divisive issues?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Absolutely. And one of the reasons why people are joining is they want to fight that kind of no reform narrative. They want to take that on.
They want to really make a difference. And they’re seeing you as we are increasingly as you identify in that kind of position, then why not be part of it? The last figure I saw, and this is undoubtedly out of date, was 216,000.
Now reform, I believe, has about 250,000 members. We are now seriously getting within striking distance. We’re also seeing some very strong polls and polls, of course, are only polls.
But nonetheless, there was a poll out this week that put us, I think, pretty well within the margin of error of where reform was polling. So yes, people are seeing there is an alternative. There’s someone who’s going to stand up to them, not pander to them, as I’m afraid, varying ways all of our largest parties have done.
And so this is the chance for something different. And people are really seizing, you know, it’s a slogan, make hope normal again. But it’s something that people really feel.
I mean, I was out on the weekend, both in Cardiff and in Camden, which is a nice pair of seas, but quite a long way apart. And meeting people in Cardiff, the most recent member was someone who joined two days before and was out canvassing with us on Saturday. So one of the interesting things is people are not just joining the party, they are actually coming out and being active.
And since we haven’t got as much money as the other parties, we don’t accept donations from gambling firms and financial sector companies and hedge funds and property developers. We need those people. We need that energy.
We need that time. And people are joining and giving that.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
One key difference, I would say, from the other parties is the demonstration of a bit of courage challenging the US administration on their current positions regarding the current conflict, for example, their treatment of NATO. Can you talk about what drives this boldness and how does it pan out as you get into a more politically significant role as part of the national conversation?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Well, we are the realists. We’ve always been realistic about the climate emergency. We’ve always been realistic about the seven of the nine planetary boundaries we’ve exceeded, and we can’t keep doing that.
We’re realistic about us being fragile human animals who are very vulnerable to things like pandemics. We’re also very realistic about the international situation. And I was actually on Politics Live yesterday with a Labour MP, and he was saying, oh, but in the Cold War, the US saved us.
And I pointed out to him that he was talking all in the past tense, and he was talking about a different kind of United States, not the United States of Donald Trump or indeed J.D. Batts. And I think it was really quite astonishing, the Munich Security Conference. People were so pleased that Marco Rubio had not sounded so nasty as J.D. Batts, the American Vice President, had the year before. But he said exactly the same thing, which was, we’re really only interested in Europe. We’re only interested in you. We’re only going to be at your shoulder.
If you are exactly like us, you have to become politically like us. Otherwise, tough luck. We don’t like you.
We are likely to even be hostile to you. Now, I mean, the US is setting this out very, very clearly in words almost of one syllable. And yet I hear Lord Coker, for example, in the House of Lords speaking for the government saying, our relationship with the US, and this is only a couple of weeks ago, our relationship with the US is closer than it’s ever been.
I mean, please, can we have some realism here?
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
If you speak this truth to power, in a sense, is there a risk that the reality is that Britain is much weaker and that we are a bit of a lapdog? Do we have real agencies in our dealings with the US?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Yes, because we have a huge amount of things to disentangle on the military scale. But you look at Ukraine, I’ve been to Ukraine a couple of times, the Ukrainian people are absolutely amazing, and have done absolutely amazing things. And they’ve done it while under the most serious possible attack from a giant neighbour.
So I don’t think that we can just go, oh, it’s all too difficult. We’ve just got to go along and be the lapdog. I’ve spoken to a lot audiences and reflected on Sir Keir Starmer’s body language as he handed over the invitation for the royal and state visit.
He’s a cowering practically. And that does real damage also to people’s trust in our own politics, which is one of the things we have to restore. If we don’t have a prime minister who can stand up for ourselves, speak truth to power and be realistic about the situation he’s in.
And I’m seeing a lot of criticism now also of the German chancellor who’s been taking much the same approach. And this is seeing, you know, doing real damage internally to our politics when our politics is so fragile, and people are so fed up and so angry about politics. Now, this is just feeding it even more.
So the implications are not just international, they’re also internal.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
You talked about labour pandering to these reform style policies and supporters and so on. In Gordon and Denton, you’ve taken a big chunk of labour support and it signals the Greens filling this void. You’re focussing on things like the NHS, the bills, inequality.
They’re pushing out some of the environmental talk because they are the issues that people are caring about. What do you say to sort of more centrist voters who who’ve stuck with you for climate policy concerns, as they as you have to broaden the whole political agenda? How do you keep them on board?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Yeah, I’m in the mainstream media. I’m reminded of when in 2015, general election, multiple mainstream media people I spoke to, I would say, we want to renationalise the railways, and they go, Oh, isn’t that a bit radical. And then I would point out to them that surveys then in 2015, showed that a majority of Tory voters wanted to renationalise the railways.
The mainstream media lives in its own almost entirely London bubble, they go to with the same people very often, you know, Tory peers and MPs, and heads of giant multinational companies, etc, etc. And they don’t actually realise, you know, what it’s like on the ground in Gorton and Denton, or very, very many other places, most of the country. And, you know, even I think of going back to knocking on doors in North Herefordshire, with what’s now the Chowns constituency, Green constituency, saying to people, we don’t think children should live in poverty.
And those former Tory voters said, No, we don’t think children should live in poverty either. Lots of these issues, actually, people, people care, people feel like we want a decent society. We want a society where people don’t go hungry, where people are not sitting shivering in their house, where people are not sleeping on the streets.
And none of those things are in any way radical. Those are things that actually the vast majority of the British public want.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
But just to add to that, can you say something about the pathway between now and the local elections coming up? And how do you see this unfolding?
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
If you ask me to sum up green political philosophy, in one sentence, I start from there’s enough resources on this planet for everyone to have a decent life for us to look after climate and nature, if we share them out fairly. That’s the global view. But it’s also the UK view.
And in terms of the path forward, it’s less than two months now to what for us are a very exciting set of elections. I said I was in Cardiff on Saturday, the Senate, we’ve got a great chance, not just to get our first Senate members, but actually to get a group of Senate members. And I was talking about what that means.
If we have a decent number of those, we also then get the support of a staff to support a group. That will be some of the best supported Greens anywhere on these islands. Up in Scotland, our sister party, the Scottish Greens, the polls are looking absolutely great for them.
But also many people will be have their eye on London. There’s been some quite stunning polls out with London. And I can’t tell you what’s going to happen exactly in London.
What I know is that in places like Hackney, where I’ve been at outdoor knocking recently for quite a long while, that’s been a place essentially split 60% Labour, 40% Green. There’s a very good chance that will tip the other way. So we’re going to see, you know, watch this space on May 8 as the results unfold.
[Nick Breeze – Genn.cc]
Well, fascinating. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to me. It’s been very insightful.
And we’ll see what happens in the coming weeks and months.
[Baroness Natalie Bennett]
Thank you very much.