Labour gives Green council partners seven days to distance themselves from conference motion
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Labour has given local Green Party groups in council power-sharing arrangements seven days to reject a conference motion describing Zionism as racism and urge their national leaders to reconsider it. Labour says it will end any arrangement where the Greens do not provide that assurance, escalating its response to the motion.
Labour is in coalition with the Greens in Sheffield, Lewes and Warwick, and includes them in broader coalitions in more than ten other areas. The review follows Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruling out a national partnership with the Greens over the motion, which Labour has called anti-Semitic. The motion was backed at the Greens’ conference in Brighton on 4 October.
- Green council partners have seven days to respond.
- Labour says it may end power-sharing deals.
- The review follows the Greens’ conference vote.
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Labour and the Green Party are separate political parties in the UK. In some councils, where no party governs alone, parties agree to share power and work together on local decisions such as services and budgets.
The dispute concerns a Green Party conference motion linking Zionism with racism. Zionism is a movement supporting a Jewish homeland in Israel; the term and its meaning are contested, and the motion has prompted objections from Labour. Local council partnerships can be affected by disagreements between parties, even when those disagreements concern national party policy.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Labour can argue that local partnerships depend on shared commitments to oppose antisemitism, and that the motion’s wording risks denying Jewish people the same right to national self-determination afforded to others. Asking councillors to clarify their position gives local groups a chance to show that the partnership remains compatible with those commitments.
The case against
Green councillors can argue that ending local arrangements over a national conference motion risks punishing local representatives for a decision they may not have made, and can weaken cooperation on services and local priorities. They may also see the demand to reject the phrase as an attempt to constrain legitimate criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy, rather than a fair test of their opposition to antisemitism.
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Originally published by Daily Mail as “Labour poised to sacrifice power-sharing council deals with Greens if local parties don’t reject ‘Zionism is racism’ stance within a week”.