Labour has handed Green councillors a Sunday deadline to publicly disown their party’s conference motion defining Zionism as a form of racism, threatening to dismantle power-sharing agreements across nine local authorities if they refuse. The ultimatum, delivered via the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), marks a significant escalation in the fallout from the Green Party of England and Wales’ annual conference last month. With local alliances underpinning budgets and cabinet positions in councils from Sheffield to the Derbyshire Dales, the coming days will test whether pragmatic localism can survive a deepening ideological fracture.
The Ultimatum and the Deadline
The BBC understands that Labour’s ruling NEC has written to Green groups in affected councils demanding a clear repudiation of the motion passed in Brighton. The policy, adopted by party members, described Zionism as an ideology supporting an “ethnonationalist Jewish state” responsible for the “disenfranchisement and destruction” of Palestinians, and endorsed a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine.”
Labour’s rulebook requires NEC approval for any local power-sharing arrangement. It also mandates that local groups “stand down” from such deals when instructed by their regional office. The Green Party’s constitution, by contrast, devolves final authority on local coalitions to its local parties. This structural asymmetry means Labour holds the trigger.
A Green Party spokesperson condemned the intervention. “For the Labour government to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism is disappointing and wrong,” they said. “Trying to tell local parties what to do and who they can work with is undemocratic.”
Councils at Risk: Where Alliances Are Most Fragile
The crisis is most acute in nine authorities where Green councillors are essential to maintaining a working majority. In three — Sheffield City Council, Warwick District Council and Lewes District Council — Labour and the Greens govern in formal coalition. In six others — West Oxfordshire, Stafford Borough, Havant Borough, Broadland, Derbyshire Dales and Wealden District Councils — Green support is pivotal to passing budgets and key decisions.
In Stafford, the arrangement places a single Green cabinet member, Tony Pearce, in charge of the climate change portfolio. Labour has confirmed that failure to reject the Zionism motion will trigger a process to remove him. The leader of the Stafford Green group, Doug Rouxel, told the BBC the group was “formulating a response” which it intends to put to party members first. Councillor Pearce has not yet commented.
The response across the map has been uneven. In Lewes, Wealden, Broadland, West Sussex and North Somerset, local Green groups have already distanced themselves from the conference motion or explicitly disagreed with it. That reduces the immediate risk of collapse in those chambers. Elsewhere, silence prevails, leaving the future of cooperation in limbo.
Internal Green Divisions and Resignations
The pressure has already claimed a political scalp. Chris Collier, leader of the Labour group on Green-led Lewes District Council, has resigned from the Labour Party in protest at the tone of the ultimatum. He will remain in the cabinet as an independent, preserving the alliance formed in May 2023. The BBC has been told Collier objected to the language and approach of his own party’s demand, not the principle of opposing antisemitism.
His departure underscores a wider unease. Green leader Zack Polanski, who missed the conference vote while contesting a Westminster by-election, has described the motion as “imperfect” and signalled a desire to see it amended at a future conference. Four of the party’s five MPs criticised the policy. Yet the motion remains official party policy until the next conference, leaving local councillors caught between a democratic mandate they did not create and a coalition partner demanding its repudiation.
Conference Motion and Wider Fallout
The Brighton vote has reverberated beyond town halls. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has already ruled out any future coalition with the Greens at a regional level, citing the motion as a red line. Jewish organisations and cross-party figures have condemned the policy as antisemitic, arguing it denies the Jewish right to self-determination.
Labour’s calculation is both moral and electoral. With a general election on the horizon, the party is keen to draw a sharp line on antisemitism after the Corbyn era. But the move carries risk: forcing the collapse of stable, progressive administrations over a motion many local Greens never voted for could look like centralised heavy-handedness.
The NEC meets after Sunday to decide the fate of the pacts. If it orders withdrawal, Labour groups will have to choose between obeying the centre and governing effectively. For the Greens, the choice is between party discipline and the lever of local power.
Why it Matters
This standoff is more than a dispute over a conference motion; it is a stress test for the fragile architecture of progressive cooperation in local government. If Labour follows through, it could unseat Green cabinet members, paralyse budgets, and hand control to Conservative or independent groups in key councils — all while gifting the Greens a narrative of democratic martyrdom. Conversely, if Labour blinks, it risks accusations of inconsistency on antisemitism. The outcome will shape not just the next few weeks of council business, but the terms on which the centre-left can credibly claim to govern together in the years ahead.
