Green House Think Tank: Report from GPEW Autumn Conference 2026

Since the Green Party of England and Wales Autumn 2026 Conference at the start of October, several major news outlets have focused solely on the controversial Zionism is Racism motion. Yet behind those headlines, the Green Party passed many other significant policies and hosted important debates. Grassroots-led, democratic and firmly left-leaning, these policies and positions set out a radical vision for the Greens’ sustainable society.

Five motions enshrined full chapter rewrites in policy: Transport, Marine and Coastal, Health, Culture, Media and Sport, and Crime and Justice. None of these chapters had been revised fully in the last decade (and, in the case of Crime and Justice, in over 30 years). Alongside these major rewrites, a package of significant policy changes came into effect on energy, agriculture, climate, pollution, disability, finance and much more.

Climate and nature policies were also high on the agenda, but given how uncontroversial such positions are for Greens, these were fast-tracked. So, even members may have blinked and missed the significance of motion E16, which calls for a Nature, Biodiversity and National Security Act to position the protection and restoration of nature as a fundamental national security priority.

Green House Think Tank staffed a stall in the main foyer. We spoke to many first time conference-goers eager to discuss policy and research locally, nationally and internationally. The energy was infectious - and highly renewable!

Here, attending members of Green House’s Core Group share their perspectives on significant policies and debates that you may have missed.

Nadine Storey: Economy

C05: Fiscal Referees: A New Economic Framework for People and Planet

The Green Party adopted an essential new addition to its economic policy at this conference. It will be fundamental to the next manifesto, showing how a strong programme for government can be afforded, enabling spokespeople to respond to the journalists’ all-too-familiar gotcha.

Wealth taxes remain an important lever for addressing inequality but it has become untenable to argue that they fund the raft of transformational policies that the Greens espouse. These policies demand significant investments in health, social care, retrofitting, social housing, and more. As successive governments fail to take sufficient action on climate mitigation, the estimated cost of effective adaptation increases. This economic framework enables party spokespeople to justify how the programme can be afforded, so long as the real resources are available (or can be made available through active redirection by government). The Green Party thereby rejects the myth that the availability of money is the barrier to action, thus adhering to Keynes’ famous maxim: “Anything we can actually do, we can afford”.

The new approach passed into policy with overwhelming support in the conference hall. Such broad support may be attributed to a thorough consultation process, which secured endorsement from a range of heterodox economic organisations and individuals, including Ann Pettifor, Richard Murphy, Positive Money and the New Economics Foundation (NEF).

The new policy reveals the bond markets as a manufactured bogeyman. The plan is to revert to a tap system of bond issuance, the way the bond market was managed between the 1940s and 1980s. The spectre is thus banished with this common-sense approach.

A proposal originating with NEF provides one of the central ideas, that of a Fiscal Policy Committee (aka Fiscal Referees). The committee would recommend a responsible spending range based on real-world factors of resource availability (people and key materials), import dependencies and the need to stay – or return in some cases – to within planetary boundaries. 

Inflation is not ignored, though. The new policy uses a ‘whole of government’ approach to inflation management. Whilst interest rates remain a tool to handle demand-pull inflation, it is of no use against cost-push inflation, the type the UK is currently confronting, with climate and geopolitical upheavals (e.g. Hormuz) leading to supply chain impacts. Thus, the new economic policy embraces a range of levers that the government can use appropriately to control inflation: targeted price controls, strategic buffer stocks, public investment to build national resilience, and strategic taxation to shape consumption and investment patterns that redirect real resources. 

The Green Party’s new economic approach is in good company. Recent reports by academics such as Ryan-Collins et al (2026) and The New Economics Council, co-chaired by Mazzucato (2026) support similar policies.

The economic programme was further strengthened by the adoption of other motions at this conference, notably carbon pricing (an approach using instruments differentiated by sector rather than a simple carbon tax) and strengthening controls over monopolies, venture capital and private equity.

Tom Scott: Ukraine Solidarity

Two emergency motions on Ukraine were timed out, but an interesting fringe event hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, ‘Progressive foreign and security policy in an unstable era,’ illustrated something of a fault line in both the Green Party and the wider Left.

Danièle Obono, a parliamentary deputy of La France Insoumise, made a familiar case – pretty much aligned with the UK’s Stop the War movement – that Putin’s invasion was provoked by Western “warmongering” and the expansion of Nato. She argued Western countries should not be “feeding the war” by supplying military aid to Ukraine, that resources should instead be assigned to social spending, and that imperialism, whether Russian or American, can only be defeated by working class solidarity.

Li Andersson of the Finnish Left Alliance (which she led between 2016 and 2024) made a much more nuanced case for an independent European security architecture. In response to the real threat of Russian aggression, she advised reducing Europe’s dependence on the US, which can no longer be seen as any kind of reliable ally. Alongside this, the EU should strengthen its position as an alternative to ‘might is right’ authoritarianism that threatens to destroy the last vestiges of the so-called international rules-based order.

While agreeing with Obono on the need (ultimately) for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, Andersson argued that refusing further military aid would lead instead to its forced surrender. This, in turn, would allow the subsequent plundering of its resources by both Russian and US interests on the basis of a Trump-Putin deal. This position was warmly welcomed by the Ukrainians in the room.

George Ttoouli: Culture, Media and Sport

B04: Culture, Media and Sport Voting Paper

Among the five major chapter rewrites, the new Culture, Media and Sport chapter brings several radical new positions to the fore. Collectively, these are designed to recognise how vital all three areas are to societal health, especially a thriving democratic citizenship.

Fundamental to the whole chapter is recognition that deregulation – what has been called ‘freedom,’ whether of expression or the press – has predominantly favoured those with the power to bend markets and public opinion to their will. The chapter thereby sets out strict, independent regulatory principles to level the playing field between billionaires, lobbyists and independent, grassroots voices.

In Culture, policies focus on ensuring artists can earn a living at home and abroad by improving rights, funding and copyright protections, while regulating streaming platforms and similar digital exploitation of their labour. The arts have long been recognised as vital to the UK economy, but the new policies also acknowledge the deep and transformative roles that culture and creativity play in fostering individual and collective wellbeing. New policies take positive stances on participation through social prescribing and helping live events to flourish.

In Media, the most significant policy sets out a clear position to mutualise the BBC, so those who pay for the service can participate in decision-making on operational matters and governance. Accompanying this, a raft of positions set out a strategy for curtailing the significant control billionaire media magnates have over public awareness and opinion while shifting the balance toward local and public interest news. 

This includes a position, based on a Green House Think Tank report, that restricts manipulative advertising in public spaces. Two further dimensions reclaim public discourse from private interests. One, based on calls from the Media Freedom Act Campaign, would force think tanks to be transparent about their funding. The other bans political lobbying and political hospitality from industries also banned from advertising – those that cause the greatest social harms.

Finally, the Sport section sets out an inclusive, nurturing vision for participation for players, spectators and supporters. While including stances on international and professional sports and ethics, the focus is very much on inclusion at the local level, with participation by everyone, at all life stages and capacities. Ensuring accessible infrastructure, developed within planetary boundaries, is a major feature.

The main limitation to the chapter rewrite here was the lack of capacity and expertise to handle all things digital: platforms, big tech, AI, data centres, and social media. Several policies on these topics came to Conference, but were not heard, yet they lay the ground for conversations going forward.

Jonathan Essex: Tackling the Housing Emergency

There was a major focus on Housing at this conference, highlighting its critical impact, alongside food and energy, on the UK’s cost-of-living crisis. Zack Polanski announced Green Party proposals for a three-year, ‘triple lock’ emergency brake on private rents to cap increases at whichever is lowest out of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation level, wage growth, or 2%.

A fringe event on Housing explored the root causes at the heart of the housing crisis and how they might be addressed now and in the long term, drawing on policymakers and best practice from across Europe.

Molly Harris (researcher at the NEF) noted that the policies Zack outlined were previously called for by NEF. She highlighted that recent local controls on rent levels in Europe, such as in Paris, have produced a 4% fall in rents without any reduction in housing supply. Such controls can provide an emergency brake on cost-of-living pressures now while longer-term structural reforms are brought about. Molly contrasted this to the UK, which has had increasingly unfair rents compared to mainland Europe since the 1970s. Right-to-Buy, the removal of renter protections and credit liberalisation have led to the buy-to-let mortgage becoming an investible asset class. All of this can be undone, not least through a massive programme of building council houses.

Ciarán Cuffe (co-chair of the European Green Party) focused on housing being seen as an investment class rather than a social right, with capital investment and speculation driving up prices. He highlighted that Ireland already has a 2% cap on rent increases and that the UK needs to address the challenge of retrofit at the same time.

Florian Tschebul, Green councillor in Vienna, argued for housing to be owned or regulated by local councils. He set out how this came about historically in Vienna through a city-level, progressive wealth tax and zoning laws that mandate up to two-thirds of housing to be social housing in some parts of the city. He contrasted this to social housing being sold off to housing associations and under Right-to-Buy. He shocked the audience by informing them that the cost of renting a large Vienna apartment – typically £3000 a year, and less for social housing.

Professor Claire Colomb (Cambridge University) highlighted the complete disconnect between wages, house prices and rents. She positioned the crisis as a symptom of a retreat of the welfare state, with housing being treated as retirement assets to supplement the state pension. She also highlighted the 600,000 homes empty in England for more than six months and the need for councils to collaborate with platforms such as Airbnb to suspend illegal listings.

The session closed by exploring the huge contrast between what is happening now and what is possible. Speakers dispelled the myth that simply building more homes (the 1.5 million government target) would result in more locally available, affordable homes. Social housing provision should be counter-cyclical so as to sustain house-building when the private market declines and support the economy more broadly. Measly co-living schemes offer just  another way of financialising housing. We need to address the real issues of land ownership and land banking by developers, so councils can lead on mixed use, socially diverse schemes. It is time to reclaim housing from profit-first privilege and restore it as a human right.