At St George\u2019s Hall at the start of this week<\/a>, local Green MP Carla Denyer – the previous co-leader Polanski took over from – was on the stage, along with climate justice activist Dominique Palmer, but Polanski was the star attraction – tickets for the rally sold out within three hours.<\/p>\n His appearance was greeted with whoops and cheers, every pause in his speech sparked a round of applause. His final address brought a standing ovation. For the long-standing Green Party members of Bristol, and for the newbies, this appears to be the Green surge they\u2019ve been waiting for, following the 2024 surge that saw them win<\/a> effective control of City Hall, elect Bristol\u2019s first Green MP and finish second in all the other Westminster seats<\/a> in the city.<\/p>\n Since September, the Green Party say its membership has gone through the roof. Nationally, it\u2019s gone from around 68,000 on the day Polanski was elected leader to well over 150,000 before the end of October.<\/p>\n In Bristol, the party had around 1,500 members on the eve of Polanski becoming leader, and that has now reached 4,700 in just two months.<\/p>\n So the membership is surging – there are now more people signed up to be members of the Green Party than there are members of the Conservative Party<\/a>. The party is, sort of, surging in the national opinion polls – with polls occasionally putting the Greens above Labour<\/a>, the Lib Dems<\/a> and the Tories at various points, although all are bumping along with less than one in five voters saying they support them.<\/p>\n On social media, there\u2019s a surge – a party political broadcast which launched the \u2018let\u2019s make hope possible again\u2019 slogan, and showed Polanski at dusk in a regular street, talking to camera about billionaires making money in their sleep, has been viewed 12 million times on X\/ Twitter<\/a>, and millions more on all the other myriad social media platforms.<\/p>\n But in real life? In Bristol? Earlier this week Polanski\u2019s message was obviously well received among the 500+ people in St George\u2019s Hall. At one point he asked for a show of hands for those who were new members and hands went up on every row.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Green Party leader defends Bristol council chiefs and challenges Reform<\/a>READ MORE: Mega poll predicts Greens winning three MP seats in Bristol in next general election<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI think people are really excited,\u201d he said, before the event. \u201cI think it’s as simple as that, that actually people are feeling hope for the first time, or maybe for a long time. They’re seeing the Labour government that promised change, but actually just implementing austerity once again.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then we have the Reform Party who are rejecting the old two-party system, but offering hate and division. And actually I think what people recognise is if reform can surge through the polls with hate and division, there’s no reason why the Green Party can’t and are surging through the polls with a politics of hope and community and tangible politics to make a difference.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn’t about slogans or just kind of mouthing off. This is about going, we have practical solutions in your community that you’re already seeing through the election of Carla Denyer for Bristol Central, but it is time to get Carla some company at the next election and make sure we have a group of Green Bristol MPs,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n With Conservative voters abandoning the party at the General Election in 2024, and Reform not connecting enough to make any kind of breakthrough in Bristol, it was the Greens who had the eyebrow-raising results last year.<\/p>\n Labour held all their seats with reduced majorities, and lost Bristol Central to the Green\u2019s Carla Denyer. In every single other constituency in the city, the Greens went from fourth or fifth last time around to second.<\/p>\n Polanski wouldn\u2019t be explicitly drawn on where the Greens would be targeting or hoping to win, but Bristol East – which covers places like Barton Hill St George and the eastern side of South Bristol including Brislington<\/a>, Stockwood and much of Knowle<\/a> – is going to be near the top of the list.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the moment we’re looking at all of them because that just makes sense if you come second place somewhere,\u201d he said. \u201cBristol East obviously was particularly close, so that’s somewhere very, very obvious to be looking at. But actually, frankly, I want to see a Green MP in any seat in this country.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Green surge in Bristol makes them main challenger to Labour now<\/a>READ MORE: General Election results IN FULL for Bristol and wider West of England region<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWhat it comes down to is a question of resourcing, members, volunteers and who can you get on the ground. What I would say is it’s early days before a General Election, but doubling membership, the resources that come from that, the membership money, the kind of events we’re doing tonight, it’s all looking very promising. So this will be our biggest and most ambitious election ever in Bristol.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat number of MPs that looks like yet, I can’t put a number on it yet because it’s too early. But I would say we’re prepared to be more ambitious than we’ve ever been before,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n At the end of September, with the \u2018Polanski surge\u2019 only just getting started, a YouGov poll broken down constituency by constituency had Carla Denyer holding her seat with a landslide, the Greens also winning Bristol East and Bristol South looking like it would be too close to call, in an unprecedented three-way marginal between Labour – which has held the seat for almost 100 years – Reform UK and the Greens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘I think people are really excited’ They came in their hundreds, having eagerly snapped up the tickets within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[9420,381,748,527,393,4884,14144,16656,528,11518,285,10298,55861,1470,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-559032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-brislington","9":"tag-bristol","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-conservative-party","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-green-party","15":"tag-knowle","16":"tag-labour-party","17":"tag-liberal-democrats","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-st-george","20":"tag-stockwood","21":"tag-twitter","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115518938685753002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_TCB041125PolanskiBRI_03jpeg.jpg\")
Green Party Leader Zack Polanski pictured speaking at a rally at St George’s Hall in Bristol on Monday, November 3(Image: Bristol Post)<\/p>\n![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/0_BR_PG_031125polanski-54.jpg\")
Green Party Leader Zack Polanski pictured speaking at a rally at St George’s Hall in Bristol on Monday, November 3(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n