Green conference votes AGAINST energy company nationalisation
The Green Party conference has voted in favour of a motion opposing nationalisation of “the five largest energy supply companies”.
Despite the party currently having over 215,000 members, the motion passed with just 478 members voting in favour of it. 192 opposed it, and 15 didn’t vote.
Polls have consistently shown that the vast majority of the UK agrees with public ownership of energy companies, and that this opinion has increased in recent years. This is in no small part because of the devastation of the cost of living crisis.
No nationalisation of ‘electricity retail’ or ‘electricity generation and storage’
The motion called for the deletion of a previous commitment that:
The five largest energy supply companies will be nationalised.
Instead, it called for the insertion of:
As natural monopolies with, at present, high profit margins, electricity national transmission and regional distribution will be brought into public ownership.
And it wanted to insert a position that “electricity generation and storage” are not natural monopolies and should therefore:
have diversity of ownership including private, public, municipal and community schemes
Likewise, it argued that “electricity retail” has “low profit margins” and is not a natural monopoly. Therefore, it sought to add a statement that:
electricity retail will not be nationalised and consumers will have a choice between diverse retailers operating with fair competition.
In reality, as one speaker at the conference insisted, people in vulnerable positions often find it very difficult to find the best deal when choosing between “diverse retailers”.
An amendment that didn’t pass sought to add “as a first priority”, so the new motion would read:
electricity retail will not be nationalised as a first priority
And accompanying this was a note that:
Electricity retail will be more effectively regulated, ensuring fair treatment of vulnerable customers.
What do Green Party members think?
Nuance and policy decisions relating to careful investigation of evidence absolutely matter.
But would the 215,000+ Green members really agree that removing a pledge to nationalise energy giants is the right way to go?
If they disagree, involvement in conference procedures will need to increase in the future.
Featured image via BestforBritain
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Greens are bourgeois, middle class, white and well off. They are not revolutionary socialists but dyed-in-the-wool capitalists to their bones. It has long seemed a little odd that Canary, which claims some degree of socialist affiliation, should be trumpeting the supposed leftism of that party which will never under any circumstances challenge the system of capitalist exploitation which benefits many Greens. But then this site also publishes fake ‘news’ reports effectively advertising online gambling and cryptocurrencies.
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All the “lefty” green members were at the Together march in London. These votes are totally unrepresentative of Green Party members and supporters.
The greens need a system where all members can vote on motions over a period of time -better to put out videos and written material on the pros and cons of the various issues and have a vote on the motions held over a few days. Then votes will genuinely reflect the view of the membership rather than open up motions to sabotage.
This vote will hopefully be overturned -( looks horribly like the energy lobby has got a foothold somehow) and hopefully the zionism is racism motion too will be adopted at the next conference.
The agenda forum is open for debate for weeks and weeks. There are also workshops on all motions.
The final decision rests with conference.
And the conference is made up a tiny self-selected handful those who have the time and money to turn up – they aren’t delegates and they are accountable to no-one. To be genuinely democratic, the conference should be delegate based, with the delegates being elected by, and accountable to, their branches. The current system may be OK for an organisation of a few hundred members but is grotesquely undemocratic for an organisation of two hundred thousand.
As a relatively new Green Party member (November 2025), I received NO communication whatsoever about the conference from the Party. I only found out about it a couple of days before through social media! It’s all very well saying that the agenda forum was open when it seems no effort was made to let members know about it! It all feels like a desperate effort by the anti-progressive liberal Greens to keep new members out of the democratic process. Only 400 votes from a party of over 200,000?! Something doesn’t compute does it? This conference and its decisions need to be struck off and a new system of collecting views from ALL members instituted. We have time to get this right, but we cannot allow a small number of nay-sayers to dictate party policy. We need to learn from the mistakes Labour made and not allow Greens to become just another casualty of neoliberalism.
Yes there are workshops at conference for those there. From my experience of the then Economy and Finance policy working group, full of pre-committed people. I’ve even hear it said that, since those attending a workshop all approved a position, so full conference should too (after 5-minute debate slots pro and con). AND that for motions hundreds of pages long. On topics sometimes not fairly summarised by proposers – and not researched by conference attenders, so they don’t really have a chance. Gaynor and Sean Thompson have fair points. Committing a party for years ahead on a vote of a few people not all of whom have read the full texts (putting it politely) is not democracy. [This view is given irrespective of the merits of what happened on the energy debate.]
Yes, you are 100% right, this system has to change.
lmao Yourparty bad because unorginised or something vague, but greens good dispite this and the zionist crap (which this site reported on months back before its buy out/partnership and then got real quite on the topic till it was unavoidable to not mention). Once again Liberal show themselves to be just another mask for the evils of capitalism and the real ones who are at the root of the lefts infighting, and also this site has taken down 2 articles recently from its front page one been the military in america begining the fragging, and the other been a critasism on capitalism (and hileriously a mild one at that). Still better to look here since it will report on more news then other full blown propaganda out lets, but I suspect one day it will become like the mainstream media it claims to be better then. I mean look at the contradictions already forming in its criticism of gambling but also promoting it or how it no longer calls out china or mentions that china was the pioneers of post WW2 genocide and the ones everyone else is copying the methods of. Anyway Your party is still going good, still holds the most members even if not as many of them pay into the party thats still more votes when it comes to actual vote day. finally lets not forget the greens only gained any kind of relevance by saying they would form a coalition with Your party, which of course they have back tracked on and want to work with the current people in power… no red flags there of the same stunt been pulled 3 times…. humanity are morons though so I expect the crabs in a bucket behavior to continue till one of the extinction events puts us and all life in the dirt for good.
Misinformed title that lies. It’s just substituting nationalisation for local government ownership. Try better, Canary.
Unfortunately that’s a completely false headline, such a shame that you’ve joined the gutter press.
What they actually devided was to replace this:
“The five largest energy companies will be nationalised”
With this:
“As natural monopolies with, at present, high profit margins, electricity national transmission and regional distribution will be brought into public ownership.”
There you go, I’ve done your journalism…. cough…… for you.
came here to say the same. the Greens previous policy called for nationalisation of the ‘big five’ supply companies. Now they are calling for nationalisation of the entire supply and transmission sector. They have a very long and detailed policy document calling for public ownership of much generation and the phasing out of fossil fuels. As usual the Canary are spinning hard to represent the story as the opposite of reality.
You mean you’ve turned a simple and clear proposal into some woolly liberal waffle?
we want diversity of electricity generation. this would allow for local energy schemes, which would be very difficult if all generation were nationalised. the wording includes publuc ownership as well other models, all being acceptable so there can still be a public owned generator as well.
Nothing prevents a nationalised retailer from operating and giving private retailers competition. The private retail sector could easily be crushed by the entry into the market of the state, because state entities don’t have to turn a profit.
This article is very misleading and simplistic view of what was passed at confrence.
Democratic org does democracy isn’t really news
It looks like this is a very misleading article. Monolithic systems will prevent more localised generation and distribution, which will reduce the need for huge intrastructure – pylons and m=national grid operation – instead of more localised projects and distribution netorks.