Green MP Siân Berry says opponents of Zionism motion were ‘persuaded’ not to fight it because of byelection – UK politics live

Tax cuts for big banks have deprived the UK government of £6bn in revenues, according to campaigners, who are calling on the chancellor, John Healey, to increase taxes and force lenders to pay their “fair share” in the budget.

Calculations by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which represents unions with more than 5.3 million members across England and Wales, shows that the public purse is billions of pounds worse off as a result of tax cuts introduced under the Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak in 2023.

The then government agreed to slash the bank surcharge – an additional levy on lenders’ profits – from 8% to 3% that year. The move was meant to offset a rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%, after the industry argued higher taxes would put them at a competitive disadvantage compared with other big financial centres such as New York.

However, the cuts came just as lenders started reaping handsome earnings, thanks to rising interest rates. The UK’s four largest lenders – HSBC, NatWest, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group – have now generated £200bn in pre-tax profits over the past five years.

The TUC says the 2023 cuts ultimately robbed the UK purse of tax revenues. Its analysis of HMRC corporate tax receipts shows the UK public lost out £2.3bn in 2023-24, a further £1.7bn in 2024-25, and £2bn in 2025-26 – totalling £6bn over three years.

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick has said a pact with the Conservatives would be like “being handcuffed to a zombie”.

The party’s Treasury spokesman insisted Reform is not interested in such an agreement, just a day after its leader Nigel Farage refused to rule it out.

Farage told the Press Association on Thursday a pact before the next election is “extremely unlikely”, but added:

After an election, who’s to say?

It came after Kemi Badenoch used her Conservative party conference speech on Wednesday to reject the idea of a deal, saying: “To those who say ‘unite the right’, we are not uniting with that.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Jenrick said:

The Tories ruling out a deal with Reform is like me saying to Thomas Tuchel that I’m ruling out being selected for the England squad versus Croatia.

I mean, doing a deal with the Tory party is like being handcuffed to a zombie. It’s not something we’re interested in, trust me.

Many of the most senior figures in the Green party – its MPs, former leaders and peers – have expressed concerns about the party allowing the “Zionism is racism” motion to pass, and Zack Polanski’s role in what happened.

In an interview on the World at One, Jonathan Bartley, a former co-leader, joined this chorus. He said that allegations of antisemitism meant there was now “a certain toxicity” around the party, and he accused Polanski of a failure of leadership.

Bartley said that in some respects Polanski had done a “really good job” as leader. But the Zionism motion was not handled well, he said. He went on:

As Caroline Lucas said on Newsnight last night, it was a failure of leadership from Zack. [See 2.55am.]

And there is a certain toxicity now around the Green party which clearly is gaining some traction.

We’re losing a lot of older voters. The demographic has become younger and younger. I think we’re polling now at levels we were at when I stepped down as leader in 2021, around 9%.

Bartley said Polanski was not to blame for this toxicity problem, which he said was caused by the huge influx of new members to the Greens. But he said that Polanski had not handled the conference debate well, and that he now needed to repair the damage.

I think he needs to put his hands up where he’s made a mistake. I think he needs to say I’m sorry. I think the membership will be forgiving. I think, actually, the electorate will be forgiving. But the Green party brand – I don’t like that word very much – needs to be detoxified …

What’s Zack’s job now? Zack’s job is to lead us out of that. Zack’s job is to say we don’t do purity tests, we have a different culture, we are about peacemaking and dealing with conflict well.

Bartley described Polanski as “very gifted in some respects, and less so in others”.

He said he expected Polanski to face a leadership challenge next year – but that he was likely to win because of his popularity with members.

That is all from me for today. Tom Ambrose is taking over.

The Green MP Siân Berry has said that many members who, like her, were opposed to the “Zionism is racism” motion at conference were “persuaded” not to publicly campaign against it because of the byelection happening at the same time. In a statement today, she says she accepts that passing the motion has done “genuine damage” to the party’s reputation. Berry argued and voted against it, but she says she should have done more to kill it off and she apologises.

She also says that she is glad Zack Polanski has now said he would have voted against the motion that was passed had he been there, and she urges the party to fix the flaws in it.

Berry does not say whether any particular individuals persuaded her not to campaign against the motion in public, or whether she is just referring to a general climate of opinion in the party.

As Megan Kenyon from the New Statesman reports, Greens Organise, a Green party group that campaigned for Zack Polanski to become leader, has issued a statement saying he deserves to stay on as leader.

Here is an extract.

A year ago, Zack started us on this journey – we surged to over 220,000 members, won control of multiple Councils and beat Reform in Gorton & Denton. We shook Labour to its core and forced a Prime Minister to resign.

But not all growth and success is linear, there will be ups and downs; the real test for a political organisation is how we deal with failure.

We have re-shaped the British political landscape. The Green Party can still become the ecosocialist party we need. Zack is still the leader who can get us there.

Peter Walker and Alexandra Topping are talking about the Holborn and St Pancras byelection in the latest edition of our Politics Weekly UK podcast.

Compass, the leftwing group campaigning for more pluralism in progressive politics, has issued a long statement saying the Holborn and St Pancras byelection shows why Labour and the Green party should work together.

Here is an extract.

Last night was both triumph and tragedy for the Green Party. A tragedy because they failed to win a seat that only six months ago they probably would have secured. But weirdly, unexpectedly and unintendedly it is also a triumph. For it is undoubtedly the Greens who have done as much as anyone to rid the country of Starmerism. By mounting a credible political and electoral threat to Labour’s left, realised most spectacularly in the Gorton and Denton by-election and then in May’s local elections, the Greens showed that progressives did have somewhere else to go. And that changed everything. Much to the displeasure of Labour’s right, the party were forced to crown, without a contest, the only politician in the country who has a chance to meet both the twin threats of Reform and the Greens – Andy Burnham …

If we are to rewire the state, bring in proportional representation, tackle the cost of living crisis and even begin to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism, we cannot afford to work against one another.

The Greens are unlikely to replace Labour. But Labour, short on money, short of a mandate and absent of pressure from the Greens, are unlikely to be as radical as the moment demands. We are in this together.

At the Conservative party conference this week, Robert Jenrick, the party’s former justice spokesperson and Kemi Badenoch’s main rival in the leadership contest, was elevated to the status of the party’s chief villain. That’s because of his defection to Reform UK, or his role as a “turncoat” as it was put in the party’s spoof Bayeaux Tapestry.

This morning “the turncoat”, who is now Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson, gave a speech. It was about the economic choices facing the country, and included criticism of Labour, but Jenrick sounded at his most passionate when he was laying into former colleagues.

Jenrick pointed out that the main policy announcements at the Tory conference favoured the very rich. He explained:

People earning a hundred and fifty grand a year will get free childcare.

People in £2m houses will get a council tax cut.

And if the people who pass away in that mansion have £1m more in the bank, they’ll pay nothing whatsoever.

Kensington Kemi knows who her people are.

Millionaires, not Mansfield.

Jenrick said the main Tory announcement, exempting homes from inheritance tax, would “only benefit one person in 245 in the east Midlands, one in 472 in the north-east [and] almost nobody outside of London and the south-east”.

He went on:

I’ll just come out and say it.

The party of Disraeli is dead.

He said “The Tory party, unless it is a national party, is nothing.”

Well they’re not even pretending to be a national party now.

What’s left is nothing more than a metropolitan pressure group for the wealthiest.

They have simply given up on the millions of people that have the misfortune of having to work for a living ….

And, who is paying for Badenoch’s bung to Belgravia? Working families.

The Tories decided not to cut the jobs tax [Labour’s rise in employer national insurance], crippling businesses and costing jobs.

She decided not to unfreeze the income tax threshold, which is punishing more and more working people.

She won’t cut taxes on the self-employed. Or make life easier for tradesmen.

In real terms, under her plan, the average worker would pay £265 more than they did under Rachel Reeves.

And she’s taking that 265 quid and giving it to her mates in their central London mansions.

Jenrick went on:

I’ve got to level with you. I have never been happier to be shot of that dying cult.

Because the Tory party has turned its back on everybody I am in politics for.

This wasn’t just a surrender of the red wall. It was the Tories saying to everyone who has to work to get on in life: get stuffed.

Gone are Essex or Workington Man. Gone is Worcester Woman.

In their place, nepo-babies and a new plan to go after Lib Dem voters. Well, fine.

Vivien Lichtenstein, the leader of the Jewish Greens, has called for Zack Polanski to step down as pressure increases on the Green leader to acknowledge anger within the party over a new policy which equates Zionism with racism and calls for the state of Israel to be abolished. Peter Walker has the story.

Here are some more responses to the Holborn and St Pancras byelection result from journalists and commentators.

From Patrick English from YouGov

Just to temper the chat a little bit around what will yes definitely be a morning of disappointment for the Greens… This was not a seat we would *expect* them to win. It is not like other areas in London where they did so well in May (Hackey, Lewisham, Waltham Forest).

From the politics professor Steven Fielding

For any governing party in modern times defending a seat midterm, this is a very good result. But it’s not so good Burnham should even think about holding an early general election.

From the New Statesman’s Ben Walker

Grns performed as Britain Predicts expects. But Lab outperform.

To what extent that is…

A greater willingness to tactically vote Lab to beat the Grns

And/or

A reflection of the Labour bounce in London …

needs some research. Will change a few dynamics either way.

From Adam Ramsay, a journalist and Green party member

I remember, not so long ago, Greens got c. 4% in a by-election, and my reaction was “well, at least it wasn’t totally humiliating”. The fact that some people think 33% in a longstanding Labour seat in the middle of the Burnham bounce is bad shows how far the party has come.

From the Economist’s Owen Winter

There’s a fine line between righteous anger over the war in Gaza and seeming obsessive/extreme. Big difference speaking to voters in Holborn and St Pancras compared with Gorton and Denton was how many felt the Greens had moved into the second category

From George Eaton from the Arguably Substack

Zack Polanski repeatedly declared that the Greens were “replacing” Labour and said he was “incredibly confident” of winning Holborn & St Pancras. Finishing 12.8 points behind cannot be spun as a “good” result.

Back to the byelection, and the politics professor Rob Ford has written an analysis of the results for Sky News. Here is an excerpt.

This was a strong performance for Labour on several metrics. The decline in Labour’s vote share, at just 3.7 points, was well below the average drop of 19.3 points across the four by-elections during Starmer’s premiership, where Burnham was not on the ballot.

The drop here was indeed smaller than the average drop in Labour support found during Tony Blair’s first term (11.1%).

The Labour to Green swing, at 13.1 points, was well below many of the swings the Greens achieved in the 2024 general election and this May’s local elections, and a pale shadow of the 26.5-point swing the party achieved in Gorton and Denton in February.

Andy Burnham has pledged to make dementia research a national priority as he announced a £48m industry partnership to accelerate the search for a cure, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The prime minister, whose father Roy died last month after suffering from Alzheimer’s, said he wanted Britain “to be the country that makes the breakthrough”.

The government will invest £33m, and there is also funding from Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Gates Ventures to help recruit more people for clinical studies.

The investment will support The Barbara Alliance, which was launched in memory of the late EastEnders actress Dame Barbara Windsor to speed up the development of dementia treatments.

It will establish a platform connecting health data, research and clinical trial capabilities to make it easier to find participants for trials.

Burnham said:

Dementia is a devastatingly cruel disease, not only for those who live with it, but for the families who care for them.

For too long, we have accepted dementia as something to be managed later in life, rather than a disease we can defeat.

I don’t accept that.

In fact, I have real hope that we can come together and do exactly that.

Downing Street has published further details here.

Caroline Lucas, the former Green leader, has said that Sunday’s vote for the “Zionism is racism” motion has shown how the party is “woefully exposed” to entryism.

In an article for the New Statesman, she said passing the motion crossed “a very significant red line” and she said the party urgently needed to reform its internal procedures to stop this happening again.

She explained:

It’s worth recalling that this motion was supported by 1,022 self-selected members – just 0.5% of the party’s total membership – an unknown number of whom were actively encouraged to join the Green party simply to vote to push the motion through. This speaks volumes about the vulnerability of our internal structures. Entryism has been a problem for many parties, but with our commitment to direct democracy and our cumbersome internal accountability mechanisms, the Greens are woefully exposed.

In the weeks and months to come, we Greens have urgent work to do: taking action to show everyone in our communities, especially Jewish people, that our party is safe for them; finding ways of making our party’s policy making processes more inclusive and effective, our internal structures more accountable and resilient, and our understanding of both antisemitism and Zionism more informed.

Setting out what she saw as the flaw in the motion, Lucas said:

One of the most dangerous outcomes of rising populism and polarisation is a refusal to accept complexities, to deal only in zero-sum binaries. And so the radical over-simplification at the heart of the “Zionism is racism” motion has led to many Jewish people, both inside and outside the party, feeling scared and unwelcome. For many of them, the knowledge about why their ancestors or families fled Europe and sought sanctuary in Palestine can, and often does, simultaneously sit alongside their utter abhorrence at the actions and ideology of the state of Israel now. But asking all Jewish people to deny the historical realities that might explain their own families’ attachment to Israel as a sanctuary is not an ask our movement should or needs to make.

In his speech in Manchester, Andy Burnham congratulated Sagal Abdi-Wali on her victory in the byelection.

He said:

We’re here in Manchester. But actually, it’s good news from London that it’s lifting us. And I just wanted to say congratulations to Sagal Abdi-Wali, the new member of parliament for Holborn and St Pancras – and, relevant to this morning, the constituency that is the capital of innovation in the UK, home to the Crick Institute, the Alan Turing Institute and so much more.

These are from the More in Common pollster Luke Tryl on the Holborn and St Pancras byelection result.

3000+ majority for Labour, comfortable and a sign of Burnham’s gains on the left. Labour vote barely drops. Green vote significantly up from 2024, but less impressive if you assume lots of Feinstein 2024 voters went to the Greens. Bad result for the Greens but not at worst end

Wider context to the Holborn result: this chart shows the proportion of Labour’s 2024 vote going to different parties. Post Gorton over 1 in 10 Labour 24 voters were going to the Greens – that number has more than halved as Labour’s retention improved, particularly on the left.

Tryl also points out that it was a record bad result for George Galloway, who in the past has pulled off two remarkable byelection victories.

Obviously not helped by the fact he is in self imposed exile. But Holborn was George Galloway’s worst ever result in a Westminster election.

Here is Guardian video of Zack Polanski responding to the byelection result.