It feels an awful long time ago, but let’s begin by casting our minds back to the last General Election (which was in fact just 16 months ago!). It was a remarkable moment for the Green Party. After decades of steady work, we quadrupled our parliamentary representation; securing four MPs, exactly as we had ambitiously targeted.

Yet even in the wake of this high, it was clear that our breakthrough, while important, did not yet of course translate into true power at Westminster. Our gains, significant as they are, are simply nowhere near sufficient to even begin to steer the country decisively on the scale needed to confront climate- and nature-breakdown, and the escalating frankly-terrifying threats presented by AI and other reckless new technologies.

In the face of a crisis that demands urgency, our electoral growth thus far can only be the beginning of the beginning, and is just one part of what must be a broader transformation.

The Power of Honesty

What sets the Greens apart is our courage to tell hard truths. I for one don’t sugarcoat the reality: this civilisation has failed and is going down. That admission is not an act of defeatism; it is a deeply moral, courageous call to collective responsibility. By acknowledging what so many shy away from, we open a new emotional and political space. We invite people to stand with us – not because we promise, non-believably, to “fix everything,” but because we pledge to face what comes together with clear eyes and shared purpose.

This kind of clarity gives the Green Party authentic moral authority. We must become, in effect, climate-Churchills: leaders who don’t hide the struggle, but who call people to prepare, to mobilise, to adapt and to heal. That is the meaning now, surely, of those great Churchillian nouns, “toil, tears and sweat”.

In this regard, I find it very encouraging that new Green Leader Zack Polanski is willing to talk hard truth not just on the untenable inequality in our country but on the need to take climate adaptation seriously. For that is a kind of litmus-test.

Climate Adaptation: Leading with Resilience

If we are honest about the limits of ‘mitigation’, that is, about the profound failure of technocratic climate politics to date, then our role is not just about stopping things getting worse, but about preparing for a future that is already very challenging.
This means a bold, forward-thinking adaptation agenda:

• A National Climate Resilience Plan, treated as a mission – mobilising local communities to brace for intensifying floods, heatwaves, and supply shocks.
• Massive programmes to insulate homes, cutting energy costs while protecting the most vulnerable.
• A shift toward local, nature-friendly food production and water storage, building buffer zones against global supply-chain disruption.
• Investment in psychosocial resilience: helping people process grief, adapt to change, and build inner strength in the face of turbulence.

These are practical seeds of solidarity. When we tie climate realism to the day-to-day pressures people feel (rising bills, unstable food systems, insecure futures), we build a politics that is not only visionary but deeply grounded in lived experience.

Adaptation is not surrender. Far from it. It’s how we turn crisis into opportunity; how we work for a just, dignified future even in the face of hardship.

From Electoral Breakthrough to Political Maturity

Since July 2024, the momentum has only grown. The Green base is expanding rapidly — not just in numbers, but in energy and ambition. We’re no longer just a protest movement; we are maturing into a truly serious political force.

A huge part of this transformation has been the surge under our new leader, Zack Polanski, elected in September 2025. His style- clear, bold, hopeful – has resonated widely. Under his leadership, the Greens are positioning themselves as the authentic, courageous alternative to the reactionary rhetoric of Reform UK and of the Labour Government. As I’ve long argued, the real dynamic in the U.K. will not be Labour vs. Conservative any longer. It will be Greens vs Reform. These are the parties with scope for further growth. (Sadly, the challenge from ‘Your Party’ is stillborn, due to the risible ‘Peoples Front of Judea vs Judean Peoples Front’ strife between Sultana and Corbyn.)

At our most recent party conference, there was a palpable sense of optimism: not naive hope, but the kind that comes from purpose, hard work, and solidarity.

A Wave of Membership Growth

That Party Conference was our biggest ever. Under Polanski, our membership has skyrocketed.

Since his election, membership has gone beyond 150000, making us the third-largest party in the UK by membership, overtaking the Conservatives, and double the LibDems.

This surge yields a wave of people, ready to give money and time, who believe in bold politics, in integrity, and in practical action. The movement is becoming truly mass-based — and that gives us the potential for power.

Building Our Future

Building a lasting Green movement has never been easy. But this moment feels different. The political landscape is shifting. The old centre-left and centre-right duopoly is gone. Voters are hungering for a new kind of politics – one rooted in ecological solidarity, and integrity. They need reassuring that this politics is going to keep them safer: from climate impacts, and from geopolitical threats (as the Scandinavians and the Baltic peoples know all too well, now is no time to leave NATO).

The challenges ahead demand leadership that is inclusive, honest, and courageous – not culture-wars, but care; not division, but unity; not denial, but action.

We must offer a politics of preparation and belonging. A politics that unites grief with purpose, fear with courage, and hope with realism. That is the heart of what I call climate-popularism – a movement that speaks to people’s lived realities, not just their ideals.

My hope is that Zack’s ‘eco-populism’ can leave behind some of the comfortable certainties of activist ideology and of culture war-ism, and dwell more with people in their desire for common sense, depolarised ways forward. We need to be the ones who unite; let’s leave divisiveness to Reform. We ought to be the ones who are bringing together women (feminists) and trans people, migrants and working class Brits. To pull this off, we must show that we are listening seriously to the concerns of both ‘sides’. We will fail if we sound as if we are not actually interested in the legitimate concerns of women, and of working class people. Zack is at his best when instead he sounds a tone of new patriotism.

Final Word

My message is deeply hopeful. The most powerful thing we Greens can do now is admit: the world as it was will not return. But together, we can lead the way into what comes next- with courage, compassion, and clarity.

That is how we will matter most. That is how we are already leading.

The sky is the limit now of the Green Party, with many Compass-minded folk leaving Labour or considering doing so, and Your Party failing badly. However, my final word is this: the historic, terrifying threat of a Reform-led Government must bring us all back to another key Compass theme: cross-party working. My own view is that the exciting forward momentum of the Greens will mean nothing, if Nigel Farage is the next PM. So my final word is: it is time, as has happened in France recently, to think about the need for a Popular Front. This would not be a ‘progressive alliance’; it would be instead a bid to unite in electoral pragmatism (e.g. through non-aggression pacts) against climate-wreckers, racists and proto-fascists. It should start with Your Party, who, what I’ve said above notwithstanding, will likely be a force to contend with in a number of specific seats.

It would be a catastrophic collective fail if at the next General Election the Green Party advanced dramatically, but, because of first past the post and a lack of willingness to create a Popular Front, Reform squeaked in.

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Rupert Read is a strategist, a former Green councillor, co-director of the Climate Majority Project, and longtime voice for ecological truth. His report on ‘climate popularism’ will appear in March 2026.