‘High on drugs and soft on Putin’ – how fair is Keir Starmer’s attack on the Greens?

Keir Starmer deployed a prepared soundbite against the Green Party in Prime Minister’s Questions last week, accusing them of being “high on drugs, soft on Putin”.

The phrase is an echo of a slogan originally used by Labour against the Liberal Democrats. In the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election in 1995, the Labour campaign run by Peter Mandelson accused Chris Davies, the Lib Dem candidate, of being “soft on drugs, high on taxes”.

It didn’t work, and Davies won the by-election, although Labour’s Phil Woolas won the seat on more favourable boundaries at the 1997 general election.

Now the Greens are vying to win another northwestern by-election, and Labour is resorting to similar hard-hitting tactics to try to stop them. But how fair is Starmer’s attack on Green policies?

This is what the Green manifesto said at the 2024 election: “Elected Greens will ... push to decriminalise personal possession of drugs, diverting people from the criminal justice system towards support with addiction, housing and employment, from health workers focused on drug harm reduction. This would free up hundreds of thousands of hours of police time, which could instead be invested in tackling other priorities which benefit wider society.”

Zack Polanski, who was elected leader in September last year, has said he supports this policy, and confirmed that it applies to class-A drugs including heroin. It is a policy that is supported by many public health experts, and public opinion now tends by a narrow margin to support the decriminalisation of cannabis, but an overwhelming majority of voters remain opposed to changing the law on heroin. A YouGov poll a year ago found that 83 per cent said that the sale and possession of heroin and crack cocaine “should remain a criminal offence as it is now”.

The Green manifesto was actually cautiously pro-Nato, with the wording reflecting a long internal battle: “The Green Party recognises that Nato has an important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their security ... However, that doesn’t mean we think Nato is perfect – far from it. We will work within Nato for a greater focus on outreach and dialogue to support global peacebuilding, based on democratic and inclusive values.”

The manifesto also said: “Most of the world’s countries do not possess weapons of mass destruction and are safer as a result.” It did not explicitly pledge to give up Britain’s nuclear weapons – partly because it was not drafted with a majority Green government in mind. The manifesto is more of a basis for coalition negotiations.

Polanski himself has been clearer, saying that Britain should leave Nato. He says that Britain should disarm and should try to persuade other nuclear-armed countries – including Russia – to do likewise.

The other main line of attack against the Green Party is that its economic policy is unrealistic. Its last manifesto promised huge increases in public spending, on green investment, health, education, benefits and policing. This would be paid for by “taxing multimillionaires and billionaires”.

The manifesto said: “Elected Greens will push for a wealth tax. This will tax the wealth of individual taxpayers with assets above £10m at 1 per cent and assets above £1bn at 2 per cent annually.”

In addition, it proposed an extra 6 per cent on national insurance contributions for people earning more than £50,000 a year.

In interviews, Polanski has suggested that a Green government would also borrow more, because the nation’s budget is not like that of a household, and so the national debt is “not borrowing or a debt in any real sense”.

Net zero, obviously, although this is mentioned only in the foreword to the manifesto, in the context of having to go “much further”.

No nuclear power; a maximum 10:1 pay ratio for all private and public-sector organisations; revaluation of council tax bands; bringing academies and free schools into local authority control; replacing the first-past-the-post system for parliamentary and council elections with a fair and proportional voting system; replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber; providing safe routes to sanctuary for those fleeing danger, persecution and war; permitting those seeking asylum and protection to work while their application is being decided; an end to all UK arms exports to, and military cooperation with, Israel.

Most of these policies were espoused by the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn; now they have found a new home in a new party whose ambition, in Polanski’s words, is to “replace” the Labour Party.