Political parties, leaders and members often
wrestle with a dilemma: which matters more, being right or winning? Some say
being on the right side of history is what counts. Others say that if you’re
winning, you get to write that history.
The Green Party voted at its conference last week
to approve a motion that Zionism is racist, and I wholeheartedly agree.
Zionism, or any movement that believes in an ethnostate where one group has
more rights than others, is racist. You don’t need a degree in political
science or human rights to see that. But calling out Zionism, or opposing it,
is not the same as making it a headline plank of a party’s platform.
Many Green members are devoted activists with a strong moral compass about right and wrong. I think they believe in being right first, with everything else a distant second. That mentality often shifts politics. Make an issue your top priority, and it may never win you a seat in Parliament. But it pushes the other parties to talk about it, until the ground shifts. Whatever you think of Nigel Farage and his motives, for a long time it arguably mattered more to him to be right, in his own belief, than to win. Eventually his outsider views became mainstream, and he forced David Cameron to call the EU referendum.
So can the Greens do the same with Zionism? I
don’t think so, and this is where the comparison ends.
First, the issues are not alike. Most British
people have great sympathy for Palestine and are happy to call out Israel’s
actions, knowing that Israel and Judaism are not the same thing. But start a
conversation about Zionism, with its many strands of ideology and its long
history, and you lose the audience.
Second, the methods are not alike. Farage is a “far”
right populist who used tactics like fear-mongering, twisting the truth and
stirring racial tension, and they worked. In effect, he was immoral in
everything he did, in order to shift the nation’s morality towards what he
believed was right. Would the Green use such tools/ tactics to push their
values and agenda? An activist who cares about being right more than winning
will never lie or spread misinformation to push an agenda.
“Being
right without winning is like having a great theory you never get to test. “
Opinion on the plight of the Palestinians swings
like a pendulum, pulled from two ends at once. At one end, a small fraction but
a real one, are those who blur anti-Zionism with antisemitism and reach for old
tropes to make their case. At the other, the majority, are people with genuine
concerns about human rights and the oppression of Palestinians. The Greens, and
most pro Palestine movements, belong at the second end. But the more a party
turns its conviction into a headline declaration, the easier it is for
opponents to paint the whole swing with the colours of the first, and we have
recent lessons to learn from.
Being right without winning is like having a great
theory you never get to test. Imagine having the best theory of everything,
that ends up on a dusty library shelf. The challenge of navigating the world
isn’t having high morals, important as they are. It’s how you interact with
people, get involved and change things.
“Sometimes being
right is the unkind thing to be”
On a personal level, I sometimes have to navigate
awkward situations by being polite: “I love this dish”, “you look great”.
Sometimes being right is the unkind thing to be. I also try to be morally right
in politics, but I don’t have to win the trust of millions to do it. If you’re
trying to be right at scale, you need to learn an important skill: compromise,
not necessarily on your principles but on your priorities, and articulating
those principles in a way that appeals to the masses. That’s how you earn the
trust you need to change the world.
Some will say you’re betraying your principles and
your constituents by acting this way. I’d say you betray them if you don’t. We
like to think of the world in black and white, where you’re either right or
wrong. I have questioned my own conflicting beliefs many times, wondering how I
could be right and wrong at the same time. Most of us live in shades of grey on
morality, politics and ideology. Yet we expect leaders and politicians to have
complete clarity of position and act on it, and if they don’t, we call it
betrayal.
So, do I prefer to be right, or to win? Both. It
doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. I’d rather be as close to right as
possible, and win.
Perhaps the trouble is that we ask only one
question. What do I believe is right? Activists answer that one brilliantly.
But there are two more: how do I persuade others, and what am I willing to do
to turn my belief into reality? Without persuasion and power, principles stay
on that library shelf.
Of course, you can refuse to compromise. You can
stand firmly on the right side of history and keep your principles intact. But
what good is a clear conscience if you have no power to change anything?
Imagine how clear it feels while the suffering continues because you didn’t
win.
Ahmad Baker
October 2026