Zack Polanski has stormed to victory in the Green Party leadership election on a platform promising bold communication and “eco-populism”.
The new leader said he would now “take the fight to Labour”, telling Sir Keir Starmer’s party: “We are here to replace you.”
While he’s made a name for himself as a feisty media performer among the party faithful, he’s little known outside the London Assembly, where he is an elected member.
Beating two of the party’s four MPs to the leadership, the 42-year-old has already faced down the charge that he doesn’t have the establishment heft of those elected to Parliament in a first-past-the-post system.
Polanski has had an unconventional path to politics, previously working as an actor, hypnotherapist and mental health counsellor.
Born in 1982, he grew up in Salford, heading to university in Aberystwyth, north Wales, before ending up in Hackney, east London.
His political awakening started by joining the Liberal Democrats, a party he now criticises as being insufficiently left-wing, and standing unsuccessfully for Camden Council and the London Assembly.
He joined the Greens in 2017, working as a local party chairman before getting elected to City Hall in 2021 and becoming the party’s deputy leader in 2022.
He is gay and also Jewish, changing his name from David Paulden when he reached 18 in order to embrace the identity erased by his family’s anglicised name.
As deputy leader, Polanski has played a role in the party’s growing electoral success.
In last year’s general election, the Greens quadrupled their number of MPs to four, with his leadership rivals Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns among those joining Parliament.
Caroline Lucas had been the party’s sole MP for 14 years, before standing down at last year’s election, and she had thrown her weight behind the Ramsay-Chowns joint ticket.
While Ramsay and Chowns have been seen as continuity candidates, Polanski wants to push the Greens to the left, promising a mass-membership “eco-populist” movement.
Key to that approach is Polanski’s approval of Nigel Farage’s “storytelling” skills, which he told BBC Newsnight could be harnessed to send a different message to a wider audience, including Reform UK supporters.
He said the Greens had to “connect with that anger and turn it to hope, turn it to possible solutions”.
In his “eco-populism” leadership pitch he has linked inequality to the climate crisis and called for radical action “not briefcase politics”.
He has promised to lower bills with green energy and nationalised water companies, while also taking the “fight” to Labour, particularly on inequality.
The battle on inequality includes his longstanding support for a Universal Basic Income, a small, non-means-tested payment for everyone that covers basic needs.
As a former property guardian and long-time renter, Polanski has also campaigned for decent, warm homes for everyone.
He has called for the government to take action on what he describes as the genocide in Gaza, as well as being arrested for his activism with environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion.
His election potentially opens the door to cooperation with the new left-wing party being set up by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana.
Asked during a press conference following his victory whether he would form an alliance with the new party, Polanski said it was “too soon to talk about joining electoral coalitions”.
But he added that he was interested in working with “anyone who wants to challenge a failing Labour government and take on fascism and the far right”.
He said he was “watching the situation very closely” but his immediate focus was on growing the Green Party.
Being bold and radical does not come without risk, as Chowns and Ramsay, who were both elected to Parliament in previously Tory areas, had been keen to point out during the campaign.
Jettisoning the careful calibration both those MPs managed to balance to win half the party’s Westminster seats from the Conservatives could leave them, and the 3,705 Green members who voted for them, out in the cold.
Polanski sought to address these concerns in his victory speech, saying: “To those of you who didn’t vote for me, this is a democracy. We don’t have to agree on everything. We just have to have common cause.”
But the four Green MPs will now have to elect one of their number to lead their group in the Commons, setting up another potential source of tension.
Because of the way the Green Party is structured, with a leadership election every two years, members will get a chance to give their verdict on Polanski’s new direction well before the next general election, due in 2029.
