Why There’s No Such A Thing As A ‘Perfect Green’ | Femi Oluwole | Zack Polanski

0:00I can't promise to do a personal podcast with every brand new member of the Green Party. but today here's Femi Oluwole.

0:10Hello Zach, Chris Packham here. I hear you've signed up to EcoTalk, that's very bold of you, brilliant and if you don't mind me saying very bright of you too. If your audience is half as smart as you then they'll sign up too at ecotalk.co.uk.

0:34When did we first meet? I swear it was somewhere in London. I'm pretty sure it was on your podcast. You had a podcast on Food Bar Radio? Oh! Yes! Yes, that's how I know you. And was it me, you and Desiree, the comedian? Yes! That's how I know you. So, we've known each other for years. And today, I believe on the train, you have joined the Green Party. First of all, huge welcome. Second, I don't normally welcome people like this, but how has it taken you eight years? What is wrong with you, Tammy? So I thought for a long time that I wasn't the right green. I wasn't the perfect green. I thought that you had to, well, for starters, I eat too much meat.

1:14That's the main thing. I always thought that if I were to join the green party and then people would look at me and be like, well, you eat meat every single day. What is wrong with you? You're a hypocrite. And I think the thing that made me get over the line was an interview that you did. You said like, I'm vegan I don't drive I don't fly like I do everything you need to to be a good green but it's all bollocks I do these things so that people don't call me a hypocrite but the in order to be green in order to be welcome within the green party you just have to be trying to push in that direction and it's the phrase like it's not about perfection it's about direction you were pushing in the right direction and so it kind of made me feel all right maybe this is the kind of green party that wouldn't look at me as a sinner as a blasphemer as a heretic because I do agree with the Green Party.

2:04It's like, I'm not vegan, but I recognise that vegans are right. Right. In a vegan, I mean, wants to have that chat, but I'll be undoing everything I've just said if I don't show you for that. But I think your experience is really common. There's an amazing woman called Claire Shepherd in Sudock who's running to be a Green Party councillor. And she's done it several times now, but the very first time she ran as an independent. And I said to her, what was it that made you, why did it take you so long to get into a Green Party? And she said, because I drive my kids to school. and I just thought you couldn't drive and be a green and that's when I first kind of heard it and went God I really need to make sure people know that sure I want people to drive less, I want people to eat meat less, I want people to fly less but I think we've allowed fossil fuel companies to create those barriers in order to mean that you have to be some kind of Puritan to then be able to get involved with the green movement, the environmental movement I'd even say I'm a broader left too I think so often there's those kind of ridiculous conversations about this hypocrite said that or that hypocrite said that or you can only be in this very narrow niche group if you assign to all of these values as opposed to like find the one thing that you disagree with the right seeks allies the left seats seeks traitors it's that thing and that's been one of the things that's given me an issue with politics for a very long time this idea of either people's loyalty being to any specific individual like they'll find specific politicians like all right that's that's my guy therefore or anybody who says even anything slightly against that person, they're the enemy.

3:32Or this is my party. You have to be fully down for this party. Otherwise, you're out. Or even this specific ideology. Like, I love what you've said about socialism, because you talked about how, like, objectively, the stuff that you believe in is socialist. But the word socialist means so many different things to different people. And it's also, there's a degree of almost dogma around the concept where people think the priority is adherence to these strict principles in a book rather than, well, what are the objectives of socialism? It's about helping working class people. It's about addressing inequality.

4:07That's who you're there for. And if you care more about this concept of socialism than the actual objectives, what are you in politics for? And that's kind of, again, it's why I felt that the Greens party under you was more like, okay, this is somebody who just is in it to try and make things better rather than because of any specific allegiance to a party, to a dogma, to any particular individual. That's the kind of politics that kind of speaks to me more. That's so lovely. And it is amazing to see you on the day that you join the party to say welcome because we've been in similar spaces for a long time around proportional representation, around being pro-European.

4:43And so you're one of the people that was on my radar that was confusing that you weren't in the Green Party. And I already know that you're speaking as well at Green Party conference, particularly around the Green Party and race. I was going to say where could the Green Party improve I think that's quite obvious but what do you want to see the Green Party take more of? So I mean taking on Nigel Farage is necessary but also it's not just I mean one of the problems with politics on the left has been that we've been really good at attacking not great at promoting alright here's the change we actually want like we'll find enemies we'll say alright Trump's doing this wrong Farage is doing this wrong these are bad guys alright but what do we want?

5:22Like for me, my personal wish list is three things. It's we need to get blind CVs. Job applications need to become anonymous because Oxford University sent out 3 ,200 job applications to various sectors of the UK economy. And they found that if you have a Middle Eastern, West African, South Asian sounding name, you have to send between 70 and 90 percent more applications to get a call back. So it's your ability to get a job, get money in this country passes through a filter of racism. So if we anonymized the job application process, then at least people would get their foot in the door to the interview a lot more.

6:02That's one. Two, we need to improve history education so that our education isn't just stories of, well, for me, it was history was World War I, World War II, the Tudors, Cuban Missile Crisis. basically stories of white people winning wars and looking cool and wearing crowns. So you can see where that British superiority comes from. So if we had more stories of the global majority of ethnic minorities, actually the histories of those countries, their histories within the UK, then the perception of ethnic minorities would be significantly better. And the third thing is proportional representation.

6:41Because if we have a voting system where a party with a minority of the vote always gets majority control, given that black people tend to vote to the left, given that, well, minorities tend to vote to the left, and given that the parties on the left tend to be underrepresented compared to vote share in parliament, that means that right now, the votes of ethnic minorities are worth less than the votes of white people, when you look at statistically. And so if we were to get a voting system where every vote counted equally, then that would be true racial equality in politics. and I think these things aren't sufficient but they are necessary and can I be even more specific because that was excellent I think there's often a misconception that the Green Party is a very white middle class party and as I go around the country I'm seeing more and more diversity both in terms of class and in terms of race so I think we're already on the way and exactly what you just said, we're getting to a place that's necessary but it's not sufficient as in I want the party to be as diverse and vibrant as the communities we seek to represent I'm also aware it's not just the Green Party though i'd say it's the environmental movement and in some points the left is often you look around and you see a sea of white faces now i'm putting a huge caveat in here that a lot of a really important work is being done by people of color and they're leading a lot of these movements so i'm definitely not raising anyone's contribution uh very often when i hear people say this i have friends who say i feel like people are saying you're not in the room and i'm like i'm here i'm literally here why are you raising my contribution and i think they would accept that we're not where we need to be i was about to answer my own question i won't i'll just say why so there's there's a couple of things there there's one which is when you're dealing with issues of oppression you're dealing with issues of inequality in a system that favors inequality and favors certain groups you're basically rich white male straight that system will only allow or will will give a preference to people who meet those criteria actually rising within that system to positions of power.

8:44One example on my end was when we were working for the second referendum to try and stop Brexit, and we were basically this young youth movement working in an office in London, we wanted to bring in more people from diverse backgrounds, both in terms of gender, race, class especially and that was the that was the hardest one because we were on a shoestring budget young people working in the center of london because you needed to be in order to reach westminster to do all the stuff we were doing but who can afford to live in central london on a shoestring budget and so these movements that seek to challenge the power are going to struggle because we don't have the money um and so getting your foot in the door difficult plus there's also been just this narrative since well especially since the brexit referendum 2016 that kind of pushes ethnic minorities out of the room because i know that for me when the elect when the referendum result came through and i saw that the majority of british voters had sided with essentially nigel farage after he'd done explicitly racist stuff like the breaking point poster pointing at visibly europe visibly middle eastern people to scare people about european migration which is objectively racist, if he's managed to convince the majority of the population to go his way, or at least the majority of voters at the time, then maybe I'm not even welcome in this country.

10:07Maybe this isn't the country for me anymore. And that was the feeling that I felt. And when you see politics so dominated by these objectively racist people, it makes people from ethnic minorities feel less welcome in those spaces. And I think that, I think getting past that is one of the things I'm most proud about is when I see black people especially come up to me and say, you're the reason why I started taking interest in politics, because we don't see ourselves represented. It's better now. But one of the reasons why I wasn't interested in politics as a kid was because as a kid growing up in Darlington, Dundee, Birmingham, politics was just old men, old white men in suits shouting at each other hundreds of miles away in London.

10:50I didn't see how it had anything to do with me. I think that's part of the things that we need. We need more black and brown faces in these rooms in order to get more black and brown faces in these rooms. 100%. I think it's that representation. And then I hark back to my conversation with Michaela Loach, where she's running an organizing school for young black youth, young black youth, for black youth, to give them the skills and resources and the confidence to be able to represent themselves and organize and mobilize in spaces. I mean, you mentioned Europe there. I had a conversation with Yanis Varoufakis.

11:21Yes. and I think when I reflect on the Brexit referendum I'm interested what you think but I think he was probably in the right space and a lot of us, I shouldn't speak for anyone I'm speaking for me actually were not in I was doing the best with what I had at the time but I look back and go I wish I'd done things differently obviously because we got what I would see as the wrong result and what he was essentially saying was that Europe was a deeply flawed organisation but also we needed to passionately remain within because it's what we had and we needed to fight for democracy within the European Union.

11:53I put that to him and said that this June is 10 years since the Brexit referendum and the Green Party opposition is to rejoin. Have we lost Europe? And he said we have lost Europe. And I was surprised to hear him say that because it's not a position I agree with. In fact, I would go back to his 2015 position and argue it even more strongly now and say that because of the inequality in our society and because of the injustices across Europe, We need the European Union more than we've ever needed it. Like if it didn't exist, we would create it to deal with the inequality that's sweeping across Europe and the rise of the far right.

12:27And in the same breath, it's even more problematic, I think, than it was in 2015 because of the far right across Europe. So you've kind of got these two spectrums that are even more polarized. And I can understand why he's saying that's broken. But I feel like there's never been more of a need and an urgency for a movement to repair this. So one of the jokes that I often make is that because I used to work in an organization called the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation, basically an anti-orb... Cassie. I know. So it was shortened to AlterEU. And basically it was anti-corporate lobbying within the EU space.

13:04We worked in Brussels regularly criticizing the EU, especially the Commission, for allowing corporations private access to lobby their officials. So I know loads of problems with the EU. I've criticized the EU professionally and I've often joked that I would do a much more effective and truthful leave campaign than the people who actually did it. Unfortunately, we had a baby bathwater situation whereby people saw the problems and thought, well, chuck the whole thing out. As for what you said about if it didn't exist, we'd have to make it. Yes, because you often hear people say like, oh, well, the EU is collapsing.

13:43It's been collapsing for 10 years. They've been saying that forever, forever. But one of the reasons why it will never fully collapse is because it will always be in the interests of those countries to have similar laws. So that businesses in those countries don't have to copy 28 different sets of rules in order to sell across Europe. And because of that, if you actually if you didn't have the EU, then you actually the EU in and of itself is an anti-nationalist project. because if you didn't have the EU, then each country would be competing against each other. Whereas by definition, if you make their interests of the EU aligned, of the European countries aligned, then you're less likely to get that sense of nationalism of my country has to beat your country because we all benefit from working together to keep prices low.

14:29That's interesting. So back in 2015, 2016, I would have happily drank myself, for instance, in an EU flag. It felt like a really important project that I felt deeply aligned with. I still, I want to put this caveat, still align with it and think it's important. But I would be much more uncomfortable now about the imagery of an EU flag, and that's because I associate it with different things now. I'm just wondering if you've been on a similar journey or you feel just as kind of Europhile or Eurosceptic is probably too strong a word. Well, I often would call myself a Eurosceptic, but not a Europhobic.

15:02That's because I have skepticisms about the EU, but I'm not so phobic that I would want to leave it. as far as draping yourself on the EU flag people often when they book me for things they'll call me and pro-European Femi Oluwole no anti-Brexit Femi Oluwole like I'm aware of the problems I just know it's not sensible to leave the EU so yes we are seeing the rise of the far right across Europe yes I believe that you can address that somewhat by emphasizing European solidarity by saying, look, if you take back control and have all your own laws, you run into all the problems that we're seeing now because there are regulatory barriers between us and our 30 closest neighbors, which is only meaning that red tape is increasing the cost of living.

15:49So if you actually care about your nation, your country, and the flag of the UK, you should want the people who live in this country to have cheaper food and cheaper products and a better standard of living. So if you're actually truly truly patriotic then you have to be joined to other countries that's an amazing argument and i think you've just solved the problem for me for life of not being pro-european but being anti-prexit i think that's a really yeah really neat frame um in terms of domestic politics so what's happening in the country right now i was gonna say what's keir starmer getting wrong well keir starmer is getting wrong is he's doing politics by focus group right uh he I met him twice in the years leading up to Brexit, and both times he disappointed me.

16:33The first time was at a UCL event where he was still parroting the same Labour line of, we will leave the EU and we'll stay in the single market and customs union. And I was like, but why would you do that? Because that means following the rules of the EU, but no longer having a say over those rules. And so you're not going to please the Brexiteers who wanted more control because you're offering them less control. And you're also not going to please the Remainers because they want to stay in the EU. So you're pleasing nobody. And he was just he's still stuck to it because it was the party line, which is that thing of prioritizing the party loyalty over what is actually right for the UK.

17:13and the second time I met him was at a tactical voting thing in South London where I was basically going around the country to various constituencies and talking to Labour politicians and getting them to say, all right, Labour and Lib Dem politicians and Greens saying, look, in this constituency, yes, you might feel this way, but tactically you have to do this. And because I was basically working with all the different parties that were saying second referendum, and when I got him on camera, he immediately turned to the camera and was like, because Labour is the only party offering a second referendum.

17:45I'm like, dude, have you not got this basic concept? And his response genuinely off camera was, oh, sorry, we're just too tribal. Right. And I thought, is that self-awareness or is this just embracing, no, this is how I live. Like, he does, that prioritising of party first, country second seems to be baked in. prioritizing of his own ambition seems to be baked in because the way he has run things at first you could have thought maybe he's just doing what he has to do to get into power but you would you would expect a hard u-turn as soon as you got in no he's still he's still saying the same stuff on gaza the same stuff on not taxing working people and so he's clearly is just basically thinking all right how do i aim right down the middle he's literally said we are the party of the center ground so that he can try and attract as many voters as possible without actually having any principles of his own.

18:37So where is he going wrong? It's not having any decent principles. That's a good summary. And then there are people still in Labour who would be making similar arguments to what you're making. But then they add a bit at the end, which I almost don't want to repeat because I don't want to propagate it. But they go, but I've got to stay in the Labour Party because there's going to be a Labour leadership election. And we need to make sure that we get a better Labour leader. What's made you take a different path? Or what would you suggest I would say foolhardy about that strategy without putting words in your mouth?

19:09So I think the reason why, because I've stayed, I stayed out of the Green Party for a long time on the basis of, or I stayed out of any party for a long time on the basis of, I didn't want people in other progressive parties or parties that are at least supposedly on the left to feel like I was no longer with them. Like I've stayed non-partisan for that reason. But then we've got to a point where, look, the only, one of the main things that is necessary to save this country is a voting system where all votes count equally because we keep having a situation where parties with minority of the vote get majority control and that has tended to favor parties on the right because there are simply fewer parties on the right and so where i'm at now is anybody who gets the problem that we're facing anybody who understands that we're trying to work towards a kind of politics where different parties on the left with slightly different points of view, will be able to work together in a progressive majority parliament, will understand that they shouldn't see somebody joining the Greens or joining the Lib Dems as meaning automatically you're my enemy.

20:13And so I think, and so I've joined the Green Party because especially given your attitude of, look, this isn't about perfection, this is about direction. Because I'm thinking anybody who gets it should understand why I'm making this decision, because this is a party that is actually pushing in the direction of, let's deal with the fascists. let's deal with inequality and so as for the people who are still in Labour thinking we've got to work with that I can understand if Andy Burnham gets in and does do proportional representation that is great and so I would definitely support that and see if they think they can do that fine but I tried to join the Labour Party twice and got kicked out once refused a second time so my ability to influence Labour as to what happens there, clearly not going to work.

21:03So if they think they can make it happen, fine. Godspeed to them. Not for me, though. I also think it's quite obvious they're going to try and block Andy Burnham from even being an MP, never mind being leader of the party. So it seems like it's got a lot of hurdles in there. Oh, yeah. I would also argue with respect to Andy as well that there's been some differences of positions and values from Andy Burnham over the last few years, which is also accessible. I'm someone who is a Lib Dem, who's now the Green Party leader. I think people are allowed to change their opinions and views. But I've not quite seen the coherency in Andy Burnham's project.

21:36So for me with Andy Burnham, I remember without looking, this goes against my whole thing of not having the specifics to back it up. But my general understanding of how he was during the Brexit years was that he really wasn't taking a position of this thing has to be stopped to save people. and so I don't trust him entirely but I do know that his positions on inequality financially during COVID he was standing up for support for people that were out of work furlough he's been hardcore on proportional representation and he wants to rejoin the EU so on those three things I can trust him and again it's the principle of look we with things in common should be able to work together even if we disagree on other things and so as long as he pushes for those things, he's a better option than Starmer.

22:24Like you said earlier, you wouldn't be willing to work with Starmer because Starmer's shown his true colours. You know exactly he can't be trusted on anything. But if Andy Burnham were to do these three things, cool, we can work with you. But for me, that's going to be a position from being in the Green Party, looking out rather than trying to work from inside. And the argument against proportional representation was always, or the argument that was always made was they might let reform in. what would you say to or any right wing party what would you say the response would be now well I'm so glad politics has been so progressive for the last hundred years thank god we haven't got proportional representation to let lunatics into the parliament yeah so this is I've also said A if we have a country where 7, 10 20, 30 % are willing to vote for a farage that's the country we are we shouldn't use an unfair voting system to hide who we actually are we should believe in democracy.

23:18Second thing is, if Nigel Farage and the UKIP had had 20 seats in parliament in the 20 years prior to Brexit, Brexit would never have happened, because they would have had to present an actual plan for what specific Brexit deal they wanted to have, and it would have been ripped apart, because they'd have had to say, we're going for no deal. Okay, so we'd have no trade deal with all of our closest neighbours that will be doing something that every successful economy on the planet has chosen specifically to avoid. That's economic disaster. Or, okay, we'll just have a simple free trade deal. Well, but that means no single market access.

23:47So we'd have all the red tape that we're now seeing. So that would hurt us as well. And it would have fallen flat on its face years ago. So it's the thing of sunlight is the best disinfectant. Because right now, now that Nigel Farage has got MPs in parliament, he managed to get five in there. And one of them was a convicted woman beater. So the more exposure these people get, the more you see who they are. We've seen loads and loads of racist administrative disasters across it, whether it's Kent County Council, whether it's Sarah Pochin saying she doesn't like seeing black and brown faces in adverts.

24:22The more exposure they get, the more exposure they get. And so I want people to see who these people really are. So if you have a proportional voting system, which allows them to at least see what they're actually about, it defeats itself. And you've just triggered off something there. This has got a little bit of a setup. I think you'll be with me. So we live in an attention economy and the kind of adage used to be that if someone used to say something racist or awful, don't even respond to it because actually what you're doing is amplifying that message. And I've generally stuck to that for quite a while now.

24:53I think it's been clear that that wasn't working anymore. The message was being amplified by GB News. And actually those of us who were choosing not to amplify their message by not taking it on were actually just allowing the space to be vacated. Now, very recently, Rupert Lowe said some pretty awful things on social media around, quote unquote, illegal migrations and deporting people. And I decided to take it on. And so did Jeremy Corbyn. And so then suddenly there was a headline, Zach Polanski and Jeremy Corbyn take on Rupert Lowe. Great. That's a headline I'm more than happy to have. What then I noticed, though, was he'd screenshot that headline and he started to say the leader of the Green Party and Jeremy Corbyn are trying to silence me, etc.

25:33etc etc and he was getting lots of traction with that and suddenly I'm not going to name his party because then I'm doing the meta version of what I'm just saying but I realized that he was using the platform that I have to bring attention to himself to try and recruit people by creating an even bigger culture war how do we navigate this because we've got to win we've got to make sure that we stand up for minority communities and we put our arguments forward and at the same time how do we not play that game particularly on social media with the algorithm it's always going be a judgment call because there's no hard and fast rule.

26:03Generally, the rule is if they have a bigger platform than you or more access to the media than you, then you're not the one amplifying them. They're amplifying you. Like I was hesitant to do news spots with talk TV, for example, for ages was that when they were setting up into talk TV. But then I decided actually, to be fair, they're going to have Piers Morgan on there every single every single week. So I'm not the one giving them giving them eyeballs. Piers Morgan is there. And as long as he's there, nobody's going to turn away. So yeah, and as you said, if you don't actually address these things, then you're not going to actually counter those narratives.

26:38I think one of the things with immigration is because the left has been so quiet on it, as you said, we vacated the space. And one of the things that I've been talking about recently is that one of the failures that we've had on the left, especially in terms of immigration, is because we vacated this space, we've allowed the entire structure of that conversation to be built around right-wing ideology. For example, the argument of, well, if we allow immigration, then there's more competition for the lowest paid jobs, which allows employers to exploit people on low wages and it drives down wages.

27:08No, that's a right-wing argument. That's based on supply and demand. We, as the left, should be empowering unions so that workers can work together to demand better wages so that nobody is exploited on low wages. If the problem we're actually dealing with here is our capitalist system that allows people to be exploited, not people coming from abroad. So if we vacate those spaces, then we allow them to dominate the narrative. Whereas if we go in and say, no, the issue you're pointing to is capitalism, then we actually win. Does that include someone like Faraj? So you famously had, did you have an exchange with Faraj a few years ago?

27:41Oh, yeah. I used to call up his radio show on a regular basis to the point that they started screening my number. And I had to start coming up with fake numbers, fake names, and even a fake accent at one point. And that's because they genuinely often don't have legitimate arguments. and actually under the power of scrutiny that these people fought. Yeah, like one time I'd... I'm going to sound like Edward Cullen here. I watched him for many years.

28:06And so I knew what arguments he was going to make before he even made them. And one time I even scripted out how it was going to go before I rang them up and it went exactly as I predicted. One of the reasons why both Richard Tice, Nigel Farage refused to debate me is because the answers to what they're saying are really, really clear and so obvious and they can't get away from them. With Nigel Farage, objectively, in the last two months, he's been on stage hugging Lucy Connolly. Like the most famous person in the UK who has ever pled guilty to inciting racial hatred, and he was hugging her on stage.

28:37And this is violent, terroristic racism because she was calling for asylum seekers to be burned alive in a government building. That's the definition of terrorism. So he can't ever claim, see it with a straight face, to not be supporting racism if that's who he chooses to platform. So on that front, there's that. The stuff that he says about, I think he did that thing with small businesses, small business for reform, saying that he's on the side of small business. And then in the same speech announced that he was being funded by JCB and Lord Bamford, a billionaire. So the answers to what these people are saying is really, really obvious.

29:11So if you don't question them, they're just allowed to keep spewing bullshit without being contested.

29:20zach has signed up to eco talk he's taken the great plunge why has he done that well he's a man who sees sense firstly brilliant network coverage secondly fantastic customer service and thirdly of course all of the profits are going to nature restoration yes we're spending them on rewilding and you can go to our website to see what we're up to you can also get some wildlife tips from yours truly so come on follow his lead and sign up to eco talk all you've got to do is go to ecotalk.co.uk and it's simple absolutely simple and look at the benefits life is beautiful

30:05i think we've moved into a different political moment now too where a few years ago the kind of advice to politicians was to find a slogan or a line and just keep saying it so We've seen that with Stop the Boats. We saw it was strong and stable. Get Brexit done. Yeah, get Brexit done. But we saw it on the left as well. I remember an interview with Ed Miliband when he was leader where he answered the same question like 11 or 12 times. And then I think it was either BBC or ITV. They just released the whole footage to show him just saying the same answer to whatever it was. And it really strikes me that we're in this different moment now where, and this might be naive, but I think we can have more complex and nuanced conversations.

30:39And partly this sounds like it's the opposite of what I'm saying, but social media has given us space. to allow platforms to explain a little bit more what's what's being said. And the old adage is if you're explaining, you're losing. But I want to start challenging that adage because I think people are becoming more nuanced or more aware of the arguments and are able to spot well, to spot bullshit more. I think with long I think long for I think people are people often talk about how the TikTok generation has no attention span, but it's getting better. like I'm finding that my long-form content where I really go into issues is actually doing better than my shorter content so I would say that we short we sell ourselves short if we say that people need slogans and I think people are tired of seeing of being told that this three-word slogan is going to solve all their problems and then it only ends up making them poor like whether it's get Brexit done leading people being poor whether it's stop the boats leading to a Rwanda policy that was going to cost 169 ,000 pounds per refugee.

31:41Like every time the politicians do that stuff, it only ends up hurting people and people are starting to realize we need somebody with an actual thought out plan, not just a slogan that fits on a bus. Totally. And as someone who says lower bills, tax billionaires and make hope normal again, I'm not opposed to a slogan. But I think where we've maybe moved to is people are valuing more the idea of someone not having all the perfect answers, but being able to have a conversation about where the thoughts are and why the principles are oh yeah one of the things that i pride myself on is that whenever i get something wrong on twitter especially i will include the words i was wrong in the tweet so that i can then look search for i was wrong and then see all the times that i've messed up so that i can remind myself look you're not you're not infallible you make mistakes and i think one of the problems that politicians have had for a very long time is this idea that they have to have the perfect answer on everything and not only does that set you up to fail because when you don't have the perfect answer but it also makes you look like a dick um from where i'm standing labor is on a downward trajectory uh the greens are an upward trajectory which means that the old uh concept of you have to hold your nose and vote tactically for labor is dying with every poll that passes and so for me given that if even if labor were to get in again whether it's under keir starmer or Wes Streeting, if they're still doing the same stuff, if they're refusing to change the voting system, which currently allows Nigel Farage to take power on a third of the vote, if they refuse to drastically improve people's living standards by, A, taxing the rich to fund the poor, and B, rejoining the single market so that we can have cheaper food and products, then Nigel Farage will get in.

33:24And the only real option that is away from that, the only real alternative to that, for me right now is the Greens. Like, I hope that Andy Burnham manages to get a seat and manages to take over from Starmer, which would then allow a voting system where the Greens would get even more seats in Parliament. But for now, with the pieces that are currently on the board in Parliament, the Greens are the only way to go as far as I can see things. Otherwise, Nigel Farage gets into power. and if that were to happen like I'm not really exaggerating like I know a friend of mine who lives in a seat in a town where he and his wife are the only people who aren't white on that street and as a result of the riots he now travels around with a certain item in his car to make sure that he can protect himself because like the fear that when people with people's ethnic minorities minds as a result of those riots, knowing that if you stepped outside, somebody could come at you simply because of the color of your skin.

34:33When you're watching black people get jumped in parks, an Asian man being pulled out of his car in Hull, that was real fear. And for Nigel Farage and his party to fully embrace those people, Lee Anderson to say, those people aren't far right, they're just fed up. And Nigel Farage to go on stage with somebody who called for asylum seekers to be burned alive. they have said we are on the side of the rioters so if they get into power with talk of like remigration and deporting millions of people who are lawfully here given the clear racism within that party anybody who isn't snow white is on the chopping block um based on everything that they've said and so this is for me a survival issue for a lot of ethnic minority people and Can I ask a nuanced question?

35:22So first of all, acknowledging all of that, I mean, it's pretty horrendous. That's an understatement. It's grim and it's worrying. And when Lee Anderson says these people are fed up, there's no excuse for racism. There's no excuse for violence. There's no excuse for hatred. And people are fed up. And to be able to balance the nuance between the causes of austerity, the lack of communities, is the lack of integration that is often a result of the fact that there is no physical community spaces for people to integrate into. How do we find a way of navigating this conversation that doesn't for a second give an inch to this idea that people are fed up and that's why they're racist, but also does recognize that, I would argue, people are fed up and that is fueling racism, which are two different points.

36:08So the way I take the hard line is you had a chance to see the light on this issue when it comes to racism of parties like Nigel Farage. Because back in, as I said, when the referendum result came out, I was thinking, all right, people are going with Nigel Farage, maybe these people are all racist. And then it took me, especially throughout the course of the Brexit campaign, visiting areas of the country that voted for Brexit and realizing that it was primarily around poverty. It was about people who were fed up with a system that had left them behind, especially in the northern parts of the country, in Wales and rural parts of the country.

36:45People were desperate for change, and the two main parties simply were not offering that change. They'd had Blair, where things had gotten better, but was still very much a, not top-down, bottom-up kind of country. And so people then, in desperation, turned to people like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, because at least they were something different. but if you've watched everything that has been happening under Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson you know that their main policy Brexit has made you poor you know that they're saying things like you know that they're funded by the same people like Nigel Farage literally said that JCB and Lord Bamford people were had funded the Tories for previous 10 years giving them 10 million pounds so the people that you're now wanting to give all your hope to are funded by the same people who funded the Tories, this isn't different.

37:35This is the same. The Tories have been dancing to Nigel Farage's tune for the past 10 years. So if you can see that these people have made you poor, they're literally saying, we have made you poor. Nigel Farage has admitted several reform party candidates have admitted that Brexit is making them poor. It's not about poverty anymore. It can't be. And so, yes, people are fed up and they're looking for alternatives, but the Greens are right there. The Lib Dems are right there. There are non-racist options they could go with, but they're choosing to go with Nigel Farage. So I do understand the concept of people being desperate.

38:12I do understand the people of losing faith in Keir Starmer and the Tories because I have no faith in them either. But I'm not voting Farage. I'm joining the Green Party. I'm willing to work with people like Andy Burnham. I do want different, but different doesn't mean racist. For sure. And you said Tories are dancing to Nigel Farage's tune, but very obviously Keir Starmer is... Yeah, he's dancing as well. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. To talk about intergeneration, so there's been a poll out recently that shows that the Green Party from 18 to 24-year-olds has gone up to 32%, so that's literally doubled from 16 to 32%.

38:48Labour's gone down 15%, so there's a very clear correlation of... I shouldn't say correlation, we don't necessarily know that, but it's looking like it's pretty clear, of young people moving towards the Green Party. Now, people will go, but young people don't vote, and I should put a caveat there too that whenever I say this I always get lots of messages from people over 50 who I love dearly who say I'm voting for the Green Party I'm in the Green Party and so that's a huge phenomenon too that I think is not going reported but what can we do about the fact that young people very often don't vote?

39:19I think it's about reminding them that their small P politics is the same as capital P politics because this notion of young people not being politically engaged is simply a lie when you look at TikTok. Like young people have really, really strong political opinions, but the connection between what their actual values are and what's happening in Westminster, there is a strong disconnect, both in terms of believing that that's for the adults and also that sense of my vote won't make a difference. And so I think making that point that if you actually want to see the change that you talk about on TikTok and with your friends, then you have to get involved in politics.

40:00And I think it's the same thing as with ethnic minorities feeling that politics isn't for them because it's being led by people like Nigel Farage. The more people from ethnic minorities who they see on TV in politics, the more black and brown faces they see on TV, the more they think, okay, maybe this is something to do with me. So I think bringing up more young leaders, like Nigel Farage, for all his flaws, is a clever political operator because he's choosing to try and platform young people to bring more young people on board. Now, obviously, the kind of young people he's bringing on, I'm going to be kind and not say things about them.

40:37No!

40:42But yes, bringing on young people into this. And given the young people, one of the things they talk about the most is climate change, climate change and Gaza, I think those two right now. the Green Party is a natural home and so finding lots of young people who want to take up leadership roles within the Greens I think that's a good place to start I often talk about the fact that future talent is not found it's developed and actually those people need input and they need resources and role models yes exactly well it's an absolute pleasure to say I was going to say welcome to our newest member of the party but actually people are joining so rapidly at the moment that there might have been a few hundred who have joined while the podcast is on yeah I did it on the train well regardless a huge welcome to the party I think you're going to clearly be an amazing asset and I'm delighted to be in the same party as you after 10 years of knowing you thanks so much hello Zach now listen I've had a text I know improbable but true from the Beavers the Butterflies the Beatles and the Badgers all sending you big love for signing up they're hoping that your listeners are going to do the same by visiting ecotalk.co.com.