POLITICAL commentator Owen Jones said that he has been “traumatised” by the Labour Party as he attended an Islington Green Party pre-election campaigning event, encouraging voters to back “the politics of hope” in the upcoming local elections.

Addressing dozens of local Green Party members and supporters, Mr Jones (pictured) said: “The politics of hope is back. The sense that people haven’t been resigned to injustice, to the status quo, to having to vote for Labour as the lesser evil is collapsing all around us.

“Zack Polanski’s done such an incredible job, obviously in terms of making the Green Party an actual alternative to a broken status quo. I just feel very proud to be able to be here and support actual hope.”

In an interview with the Tribune, Mr Jones said that Labour had “abandoned” their traditional commitment to supporting working-class people, and the party was now overrun by “soulless hacks”.

He added that they were “completely rattled” by a surge in support for the Greens, and that their rhetoric was desperate, nothing more than a “smear campaign” that was full of “rampant hypocrisy”.

Mr Jones told the Tribune: “Their attack on the Greens is the sort of smear campaign that the right-wing Labour Party excel at. They’re some of the nastiest people I’ve ever met, not just in British politics, but in life. Just bad people, you know, who don’t have a moral compass. The sort of people who’d sell their mother on eBay for a parliamentary seat, just driven by naked ambition. Weird, dead-behind-the-eyes hacks who have no sense of hope.

“And they’re completely scared of what the Green Party is doing.”

He said that although he was not a member of the Greens, and considered himself a “pragmatic, floating left-wing voter”, the party was the only national alternative to Labour and Reform. He added that although he felt akin to Your Party ideologically, their plight was a “tragedy”.

He said: “​The Greens are now the only national mass party which offers an alternative in terms of taxing the rich, to invest in our public services, to bring our utilities into public ownership, to have a mass housebuilding programme, to tackle the climate emergency, but also improve people’s lives and living standards in doing so. Not arming a genocide, having a foreign policy based on peace and justice.”

Mr Jones said that he believed the Green Party stood a fantastic chance of controlling the Town Hall in the upcoming local elections, and that Labour were due to “take a battering” nationally. He urged people to get out and cast their vote on polling day to make a difference:

“I think the Greens have a really good chance of having a massive breakthrough. But what matters in local elections is getting people out to vote. We need to get young people, people on the sharp end of the housing crisis, minority voters out to vote, which is our challenge.”

He added: “It’s really important that we actually have Green Party councillors who are rooted in their communities, who can offer an alternative at the local level, but also stand up to the government by taking over councils.”