It all looked so simple, didn’t it? Labour won their landslide in 2024, the champagne (or sparkling water) flowed, Starmer was steady at the wheel (don’t laugh) and the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. After years of chaos, were we back on the road to normality?

But somewhere between the photo ops, the handshakes and the carefully-worded soundbites, Labour seems to have misplaced its vision (if it had one). It’s not that they’ve done anything catastrophically wrong; it’s just that no one’s quite sure what they stand for anymore, other than being “not the Tories.” That’s a bit like trying to sell a car by saying, “Well, at least it’s not on fire.”

The Greens Get Gritty

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn’s new party has quietly mopped up some of Labour’s old-school faithful, while the Green Party, under the sharp-tongued Zack Polanski, has stopped politely asking and started shouting.

Polanski doesn’t mince his words. He calls out political nonsense (or, as he puts it, “bullshit”) wherever he sees it, and people are listening. The Greens are no longer just the ones turning up to question time with compostable coffee cups and solar-powered smugness. They’re suddenly a bit gritty, a bit angry, and, whisper it quietly, electable.

The Land of Lost Landslides

The problem for Labour is that their 2024 landslide now feels a long time ago. The glow has faded. The Lib Dems are quietly nicking votes, the Greens are on the charge, and the Tories… well, the Tories are currently making boarding the Titanic look like a good idea. Badenoch is beyond useless.

But amid all this shifting, there’s a danger. When the centre and left scatter their votes like birdseed, the populist right starts circling.

Enter Stage Farage

Cue Nigel Farage, the political equivalent of Japanese knotweed: once he takes root, he’s almost impossible to get rid of. Pint in hand, tie slightly askew, he’s back again, turning grievance into gold and anger into airtime. I hate the bloke but he’s good at what he does. He knows his audience.

Reform doesn’t need to win big to cause chaos. In theory, they could easily take power with under 30% of the vote if everyone else is too busy arguing over what being a socialist means (it’s actually not hard). Imagine that: a coalition of rabid chaos between Reform and what’s left of the Tories, one pretending to lead, the other pretending to follow whilst brown people wonder where they might end up.

The “What Ifs”

Now, if unlike me, you’re the optimistic sort, you might picture something more uplifting. The Greens, Lib Dems, and Labour could, in theory, find common ground as a sort of progressive supergroup. The Electronic of politics, minus Peter Hook’s baseline and the dulcet tones of Neil Tennant. Together, they could shut the door on the far-right and maybe even force the Tories to rediscover what a smattering of common decency looks like.

But that’s a big if. Because, as history keeps reminding us, every time Britain says “It couldn’t happen here,” it’s already halfway through happening. Brexit looked preposterous until it happened. You’d have thought the subsequent disaster might have finished Farage, but Britain’s damaged prefrontal cortexes are once bitten, twice as stupid.

Be Careful What You Wish For

So yes, it’s refreshing to see the Greens shaking things up. Their energy, honesty, and willingness to say what others won’t is good for democracy. But there’s always a risk when a fringe movement starts making waves. They can end up creating a political tide that sweeps us somewhere we don’t want to go.

A coalition between the Tories and Reform will make the previous 15 years look like a picnic.