Until the start of this week, most people probably hadn’t heard of Zack Polanski. Though the Green Party deputy leader is regularly put out on the broadcast round, anyone below the top ranks of small parties are often only recognisable to political wonks and journalists. But on Monday, that changed.
In the wake of last week’s local elections, Polanski has announced his intention to run in the Green Party’s upcoming leadership election. If he wins, he will replace the party’s current co-leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. (Polanski is running on a single ticket). The pair helped the party to secure its best result in history, winning four MPs in last year’s general election. On Thursday, Denyer announced her intention to step down, reasoning that it would allow her to spend more time focusing on her new role as an MP. (When I asked Polanski if he knew this was the case before he decided to run, he refused to comment). Nominations for the election open in June, with voting expected to take place in September.
When I met Polanski, 42, on a spring day at a café near his home in Clapton he was cheery, in a neatly tailored green suit (of course). As we ordered a coffee, the woman behind the counter told Polanski she was a big fan. “I promise I haven’t paid her to say that” he laughed.
The Green Party made a net gain in last week’s local elections, taking their total number of councillors up to 859 in 181 councils. They are currently sitting at 10 per cent in the national polls. But the party did not perform as well as expected. The real story of the night was Reform UK, who took control of 10 councils and won over 600 councillors.
For Polanski, the opportunity to take on the infectious populism of Farage and Reform is a key reason for his decision to run. One of Reform’s primary battlegrounds with the government is over climate policy, as Farage wields net zero as a culture war sledgehammer. Polanski similarly hopes to put the pressure on Labour over this issue – but from the left. “I’m really angry about net zero,” he told me, “I’m angry that the government are expecting some of the poorest in this country to step up to net zero, expecting people to install heat pumps or expecting people to get a train rather than a plane, even though a plane is a much cheaper option”. Taken at face value, these words could well have been spoken by a Reform candidate or councillor – almost as though it is out of Farage’s own playbook. “While I may even agree with Nigel Farage’s diagnosis of the problems, it’s very clear that he doesn’t really intend to do anything about those things,” Polanski said.
Polanski believes the government should target UK businesses and the wealthy to shoulder the cost of the green transition via a wealth tax. These funds could then be used to pay for the transition to clean power and away from fossil fuels, rather than expecting individual consumers to foot the bill. “We constantly hear there’s no money left,” Polanski said, “but actually there is a lot of wealth in this country… but we are taxing people who are working really hard far more than we’re taxing wealth.” He added: “that’s totally the wrong way round”. The government currently has no plans to introduce a wealth tax.
This is Polanski’s “eco-populism”. And it is befitting the political moment, as the UK has entered a new phase of the climate culture wars. Both Reform and Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have turned their back on net zero, arguing that the upfront cost is far too expensive for the average consumer (not dissimilar to Polanski’s line, of course). Even the government’s supposed allies have begun to distance themselves from the government’s clean power missions. The day before the election, Tony Blair made an unexpected intervention, warning that: “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”
“Tony Blair just needs to remain silent at this point,” Polanski said. But he added that “in some ways, the culture wars are right.” He points to the “outrageous complacency of successive governments” when it comes to fixing regional inequalities and to “deep divisions in society” which have “destroy[ed] any sense of community”. To Polanski, this is why Reform have enjoyed so much success – they are able to tap into the fears rooted in long-term neglect and the impact of austerity which often manifest in animosity towards “refugees or minority communities”.
Immigration is the amphitheatre for these tensions. And Reform has gained the upper hand. Labour under Keir Starmer has moved rightward on the issue, in a move obviously intended to mollify the threat of Farage. The government’s immigration white paper is set to be published next week and is expected to include plans to make it harder for some migrants to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
If elected, as Labour move to the right on immigration, Polanski hopes to pressure the government from the left. “I am unapologetically very pro-migration,” he said, “we have a huge number of vacancies. Yes, we need do need to train British workers, but we have a lowering birth rate. And this problem is not going to go away.” But he recognised that for many, concerns around immigration are genuine. “We should be recognising people’s fears over migration and not dismissing them. There aren’t enough homes. People can’t get a GP appointment. But these problems are not the problems of migration, they are the problem of austerity,” he said.
Another thorny area for the left has been defence. In this moment of rising global tensions and increasing isolationism, Starmer’s government took the decision to increase defence spending to 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 at the end of February. Polanski and the Green Party believe this was the wrong approach – arguing instead that defence policy should focus on addressing the causes of conflict as opposed to military solutions.
If elected, Polanski would go one step further, upping the party’s opposition to NATO and calling for the UK’s eventual withdrawal. “It’s often seen as contentious this idea that NATO is failing, but I don’t think it’s contentious,” he told me, “a first principle should not be an alliance where it’s military first. It should be democracy and diplomacy first.” This seems the most radical of Polanski’s policy offerings and, if elected, it could perhaps be the one which causes him the most trouble. The latest YouGov polling shows NATO membership is still popular among voters, at 76 per cent support. However, this increases among Labour voters, of whom 84 per cent are supportive of the UK’s membership of NATO.
It is not only on questions of policy that Polanski hopes to make trouble for Labour if he is elected as leader at the end of the summer. He is also hoping that some of the party’s left-wing MPs might be tempted to cross the floor. “I have thought about rolling out the red carpet for people like Zarah Sultana and Clive Lewis,” he told me. (Sultana, though elected on a Labour ticket last year, is still suspended after voting against the two-child benefit cap). “I think it would be a game changer for those MPs who have frequently voted against their government,” Polanski said, “I would argue – with total respect to them – that [being in Labour] is clearly not working.” Would he welcome Jeremy Corbyn? “Absolutely. He got three million more votes that Keir Starmer. Every time we’re on the same platform we’re talking about the same issues.”
Polanski hasn’t won yet. But in this new era of the climate culture wars, populism is clearly the order of the day. On other contentious issues (immigration, defence), Labour are looking to bat off Reform. The government’s net zero agenda, led by one of Starmer’s most progressive colleagues, Ed Miliband, is being ferociously attacked from the right. If Zack Polanski is elected as leader of the Green Party, Labour will soon find themselves in the unorthodox position of fending off net zero opposition from the left.
[See more: The fight for Labour’s future]
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