Green Party at 'crossroads', says former co-leader Adrian Ramsay

The Green Party of England and Wales is at a "crossroads" and must return to its "core values", former co-leader Adrian Ramsay has told the BBC, weeks after members adopted a motion declaring Zionism a form of racism. Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley, said the party's policies needed to appeal to a majority of British voters if the Greens were to deliver the "environmental changes that we need", and cautioned against an approach that risked being "quite divisive". Party leader Zack Polanski responded by saying there was "no environmental justice without social, racial and economic justice". The motion, adopted by members last month, defined Zionism as an ideology supporting "an ethnonationalist Jewish state" that had led to the "disenfranchisement and destruction" of Palestinians. It also backed the creation of a "single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine", which includes modern-day Israel. Polanski did not take part in the vote, as he was campaigning in a Westminster by-election, which he lost. The motion prompted criticism from some Jewish groups and senior Green figures, including Ramsay. Israel's foreign ministry said it had banned Polanski, who is Jewish, from entering the country. The Equality and Human Rights Commission wrote to the party seeking more information after concerns were raised by dozens of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs and Jewish campaigners. Labour later said it would end power-sharing agreements with the Greens on local councils unless its councillors disowned the policy. Speaking to the BBC's Newscast, Ramsay replied "no, it's not" when asked whether he thought Zionism was racist, while adding that he agreed with Polanski and others that what is happening in Gaza is "appalling". Ramsay, who joined the party in 1998, said he does believe Israel has a right to exist, something Polanski has stopped short of saying. Ramsay said he was "deeply uncomfortable" with the motion and suggested there was an "opportunity to take some action in relation to the motion in the run-up" to the party's spring conference next year. "I think there's a real crossroads point for the party at the moment," he said, warning that digging further into the approach risked bringing a "quite divisive, a quite internally focused" style of politics, which he suggested was seen from "small groups of people on the hard left of politics who go around different parties try to influence how those parties are run". Instead, Ramsay said he wanted the party to focus on its core aims, to be "consensus-building" in its politics, to engage its grassroots membership, and to remain "very externally focused", since environmental change required the support of the majority of the British public. Polanski has previously said he wants the "imperfect" motion amended in future, but argued that the "substantial part of the motion", that "the displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people is clearly underpinned by a racist ideology", was "obvious". Israel has repeatedly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide. Under Green Party rules, motions supported by members become official party policy, though they will not necessarily appear in the party's manifesto at the next general election.