© Bristol Green Party

In 2016 I was interviewed by a Newcastle University student for his final year dissertation. We got talking politics as he was the chair of the University’s Green Party society. It wasn’t going well, he told me, when veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party the previous year, half his Green members immediately jumped ship to Labour, despite Corbyn proposing reopening coal mines.

This didn’t surprise me as traditionally the green movement has been split between the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) and the mangoes (green on the outside, liberal orange on the inside). Most recently the mangoes had the upper hand in the Green Party, coming across as a sensible and unthreatening alternative to the big two parties, and won a couple of parliamentary seats from the Conservatives as well as two off Labour. In co-leader Carla Denyer, I thought they had a charismatic spokesperson worthy of succeeding the legendary Caroline Lucas, one of the most effective MPs in my lifetime.

Then self-proclaimed ‘eco-populist’ Zack Polanski challenged for the leadership. Denyer stepped down (she has since complained of intolerable online abuse) leaving her co-leader Adrian Ramsey and another MP Ellie Chowns, neither of whom sparkle in the media, to represent the mangoes. Polanski smashed the election with 85% of the vote, putting the watermelons firmly in charge.

So what now? The watermelon vs mango arm wrestle wrecked the Greens’ first big local government achievement when they took control of Brighton Council. Counsellors had to be called in to mediate between Councillors. Having a leader from a different faction than the four MPs in Parliament is a recipe to reheat those tensions and rifts, not least as Polanski is not a man of self-doubt. And then add Corbyn to the mix, who has launched an as yet unnamed party who will be fishing for votes in the same pond as Polanski, but with an order of magnitude more brand recognition. As a political geek, it’s going to be… interesting.

However, as a centrist (I’m a card-carrying Lib Dem), I worry about the conflating of green and socialist messages. On the other side of politics, Conservatives have abandoned their green principles, attacking the very policies they brought in when in power (if there is a green fruit with a blue inside, its use in this analogy is now completely redundant). It is easier for populists to paint what needs to be done to protect our children’s futures as wacky ‘eco-lunacy’ if green/Green messengers do much of the heavy lifting for them. Political progress gets made from the centre, not the fringes, and this result may hinder political climate action.