We have all occasionally speculated about who’d be the winner in fights between a chimpanzee and a dog or a rhinoceros and a lion. In the current contest between the British political parties to challenge the stranglehold of Labour and the Tories, there is no doubt who is winning.

Reform is determined to win power in Britain, not just office. It is approaching the job with the energy and appetite of a starved lion feasting on a baby wounded gazelle. The party’s chair, Zia Hussain, says his “main ambition is to make Farage the country’s next prime minister”. He means it. The party has grown its membership from 60,000 to more than 227,000 members. It has created 460 branches since Hussain took over the role. It is a growing, mass party with an energised membership and a clear set of reactionary ideas with a light dusting of old school Labourism.

Contrast this approach to Labour, which has had a policy of “shaking off the fleas” to demoralise and shrink its membership. It is now incomprehensible how anyone who sees themselves as anti-racist or even vaguely opposed to genocide, can remain in a party which is committed to both.

While Reform are cheerfully gorging themselves on baby gazelle, The Green Party is approaching the question of aspiring to run the British state with a level of dither you expect to see in someone torn between the lemon and the ginger tea. For this they have earned the gratitude of one Labour minster who is reported to have said. “I think we are extraordinarily fortunate that the Green party are significantly underperforming”. The Starmerite used a much shorter, more scatological word.

This is how the party reported on its election results:

“After this year’s County Council elections in England, the Green Party has made a net gain of 43 seats, taking their tally to 859 seats on 181 councils. The party held 38 seats, gained 48 and lost just 5.2

To put this increase of 43 seats into context, Reform won 677 new council seats. This is the difference between quantitative and qualitative change and is why Wes Streeting is openly saying that Reform are likely to be Labour’s main rivals.

Last summer the Green Party was reported to have 59 000 members, essentially the same as Reform. While Farage’s assortment of far right ideologues, fruitcakes, aging racists and people furious at the world have energetically thrown themselves into winning the next election the Green Party is trapped in a routine in which members are encouraged to go out litter picking (I’m bloody serious!) and ultra localised electioneering in tiny numbers of targeted seats while being provided with no meaningful opportunities for political activity.

In the fight to win over working class voters from Labour, in most parts of England the contest between the Greens and Reform is a poodle against a rottweiler.