\u201cI take huge inspiration from Mamdani,\u201d Polanski proudly declared<\/a> after the election of New York\u2019s new mayor.<\/p>\n Polanski\u2019s rise has also stymied the launch of Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s new far-left party, which has been riven by infighting between allies of the disgraced former Labour leader.<\/p>\n And the Greens\u2019 ascent is increasing pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to tack to the left to stem the bleeding of its supporters to Polanski\u2019s party.<\/p>\n Amid a dizzying array of U-turns, anaemic economic growth and soaring taxes, and talk of a leadership challenge to Starmer, Labour\u2019s support has sunk in the polls. The Conservatives\u2019 historic defeat last July means they remain in the doghouse in many voters\u2019 eyes. Instead, led by Nigel Farage \u2014 a populist libertarian who led the successful campaign for Brexit \u2014 the insurgent right-wing Reform UK is making the political weather.<\/p>\n But while Farage mops up disenchanted Tories and chips away at Labour\u2019s traditional working-class support in the \u201cred wall\u201d constituencies of the north of England, Polanski is winning the backing of younger voters, especially in the UK\u2019s left-leaning big cities.<\/p>\n A former actor-turned-hypnotherapist, Polanski defected from the centrist Liberal Democrats to the Greens in 2017. He was subsequently elected to the London Assembly, to which the capital\u2019s mayor is answerable, and elected Green Party deputy leader. This summer, he campaigned for the top job, using his successful run for the party\u2019s leadership to cast himself as the anti-Farage, while promoting an approach he dubs \u201ceco populism.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Polanski\u2019s strategy makes good electoral sense. At the last general election, the Greens came in second for 40 parliamentary seats; all of them are held by Labour and most in the party\u2019s urban, graduate-heavy strongholds, including London, Manchester, Leeds and Merseyside.<\/p>\n A radical agenda<\/p>\n If not entirely absent, the Greens\u2019 traditional pitch on climate change has been relegated to the backseat. In its place, Polanski has adopted a message which combines class warfare and ultra-progressivism<\/a>, arguing: \u201cThere is no environmental justice without racial, social and economic justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Wealth and inequality, not climate change, were the centrepiece of his address<\/a> to the Green Party\u2019s annual conference in October. Claiming that the UK is a country where \u201ca tiny few have taken our power, our wealth,\u201d he declared it is \u201ctime to take it back,\u201d by introducing a wealth tax on the \u201csuper rich\u201d and ending the \u201cfailed experiment\u201d of privatization. The Greens want to nationalize the utility companies, establish<\/a> a state-owned housebuilder and cap high salaries<\/a>. \u201cWe don\u2019t need to tax and spend,\u201d Polanski told the BBC<\/a> in September. \u201cWe need to spend and tax.\u201d<\/p>\n At a time when public concern about immigration tops the polls<\/a>, Polanski is \u201cunapologetically very pro-migration.\u201d And, placing himself front and center of Britain\u2019s culture wars, he described<\/a> the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark ruling this spring, which defined women by their biological sex rather than their gender identity, as \u201cthinly veiled transphobia\u201d and pledged to \u201csupport our trans siblings unconditionally.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Polanski opposes the government\u2019s increase in defense spending (the Greens have long opposed Britain\u2019s independent nuclear deterrent) and toyed with the UK leaving NATO during the leadership campaign. Last month, he sparked<\/a> an incredulous reaction from a TV interviewer when he said he would ask the Russian president to give up his nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n While Polanski terms<\/a> Farage a \u201cTrump-loving, tax-avoiding, science-denying, NHS-dismantling corporate stooge,\u201d Starmer\u2019s Labour is the main focus of his attacks. \u201cWhen Farage says jump, Labour [says] \u2018how high,\u2019\u201d he says<\/a>, accusing<\/a> Starmer of \u201c[creating] the circumstances for the far right to rise\u201d by \u201cprotecting the wealth and power of the super rich.\u201d<\/p>\n But it is Labour\u2019s supposed support for Israel which has most provoked Polanski\u2019s ire. In his keynote speech to the Green conference in October, the party\u2019s new leader made no mention of Iran, China or Russia \u2014 the only mention of Ukraine was a passing reference to his Jewish ancestry \u2014 while devoting several passages to Gaza.<\/p>\n After assailing Israel\u2019s \u201cmass slaughter\u201d and \u201cgenocide\u201d in Palestine, he railed against Starmer\u2019s government, which he labeled \u201can active participant in the murdering of the Palestinians.\u201d Polanski went on to reiterate the Greens\u2019 calls for a complete arms embargo on Israel, an end to intelligence sharing and a lifting of the ban on the extremist group Palestine Action.<\/p>\n Polanski, who has repeatedly called<\/a> for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and condemned Israel\u2019s \u201chorrendous and illegal\u201d airstrikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear and ballistic missile programs in June, says he grew up in a \u201cvery Zionist\u201d household and was raised to believe the Jewish state was \u201cthe center of everything\u201d and \u201cmust be defended at all costs.\u201d But \u201cIsrael has changed,\u201d claims Polanski, who says he is \u201ccertainly not a Zionist.\u201d<\/p>\n \t As he has adopted a more hardline position on Israel, Polanski also appears to have shifted his stance on what he considers to be antisemitism. He has recanted<\/a> his past criticism of the antisemitism scandal which roiled Labour under Starmer\u2019s hard-left predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. He now claims it was \u201cblatantly not true\u201d that the party had been \u201crife\u201d with antisemitism and that he had been wrong to criticize it.<\/p>\n Polanski\u2019s anti-Zionist stance doesn\u2019t represent a radical break with the Greens\u2019 historic hostility towards the Jewish state.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Polanski\u2019s response to media revelations about antisemitism within the Green Party during last year\u2019s general election was to warn against \u201cthe conflation between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and antisemitism\u201d while accusing other parties of \u201cweaponizing\u201d the issue.<\/p>\n As Polanski has acknowledged<\/a>, progressive voters\u2019 belief that Labour has not been tough enough on Israel has won the Greens additional support.<\/p>\n But Polanski\u2019s anti-Zionist stance doesn\u2019t represent a radical break with the Greens\u2019 historic hostility towards the Jewish state. According to Dr. James Vaughan, an expert in UK-Israel relations at the University of Aberystwyth\u2019s department of international politics, as far back as 1990, a senior Green Party member was reportedly arguing that there was \u201cno Green justification for Israel\u2019s existence at all.\u201d Well over a decade ago, a report commissioned by the Green Party Regional Council expressed concern about a tendency for anti-Israeli activism to slide towards a tolerance for low-level antisemitism.<\/p>\n \t \u201cIn that sense, the positioning of the Green Party under Polanski\u2019s leadership isn\u2019t especially new, it is simply operating in a much more favorable political climate where previously marginal views about the illegitimacy of Zionism are becoming more widely accepted and normalized,\u201d says Vaughan.<\/p>\n Polanski\u2019s style of politics is grabbing as much, if not more, attention as the substance of his policies. Articulate, charming and personable, he delivers his message without the air of menace and moral superiority that has traditionally limited the electoral appeal of the hard left. His hyperactive and social media-savvy style of leadership is already bearing fruit. Polanski has over 100,000 followers on TikTok (double that of Starmer) and 500,000 on Instagram. Shortly after winning the Green leadership, he launched his own weekly podcast, \u201cBold Politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Under the new slogan \u2018make hope normal again,\u2019 the Greens\u2019 membership has risen from under 70,000 earlier this year to 184,000 in December \u2014 overtaking both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Under the new slogan \u201cmake hope normal again,\u201d the Greens\u2019 membership has risen from under 70,000 earlier this year to 184,000 in December<\/a> \u2014 overtaking both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives \u2014 and the party is polling higher than ever before, with some surveys showing it pulling level with Labour. Polling in October indicated that 15% of those who backed<\/a> Labour last July now say they will switch to the Greens. The polls also show<\/a> the Greens gaining strongly in London, a Labour stronghold, and beating Starmer\u2019s party among young people by 25 points.<\/p>\n Prof. Glen O\u2019Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University, terms Polanski \u201cthe most dangerous opponent Labour has faced on its left flank for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPolanski is a skilled operator who tells liberal, outward-looking Britain exactly what it wants to hear. On government spending, immigration, public services and the like, he speaks exactly the language of the progressive middle classes, disillusioned by Starmer\u2019s turn towards placating Reform UK voters,\u201d says O\u2019Hara. \u201cPolanski\u2019s already started to moderate his left-wing language to some extent, so as to widen his appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n The Your Party farce<\/p>\n Polanski has also successfully blunted Corbyn\u2019s hopes to capitalize on Labour\u2019s unpopularity by providing a new political home for left-wing Britons.<\/p>\n Polanski, who has previously said he would welcome Corbyn into the Greens\u2019 ranks, has been helped by the chaotic launch of Corbyn\u2019s socialist Your Party and bitter squabbling among its founding members.<\/p>\n Corbyn, who was kicked out of Labour by Starmer following a scandal over antisemitism in the party under his watch<\/a> and reelected to parliament last July as an independent, began making his initial moves to form a new left-wing party earlier this summer. He quickly succeeded in winning the backing of the Independent Alliance, a grouping of pro-Gaza MPs who seized four heavily Muslim seats from Labour at the general election.<\/p>\n \t But relations between Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, a young Muslim MP who shares his far-left, anti-Israel politics, have been strained from the outset. First elected to the House of Commons in 2019, Sultana was suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party shortly after the general election for rebelling against the new government in a vote on welfare policies.<\/p>\n Having formally resigned her Labour membership in July, Sultana immediately declared<\/a> she was launching a new party with Corbyn. The announcement appeared to take Corbyn by surprise, and he immediately signalled his irritation. When the party\u2019s website was formally launched several weeks later, the pair couldn\u2019t even agree on a name. Corbyn referred to it as \u201cYour Party,\u201d while Sultana said<\/a> that wouldn\u2019t be the new entity\u2019s name and that she preferred \u201cthe Left Party.\u201d The decision was deferred with an agreement that members would vote on the party\u2019s new name at an inaugural conference in the autumn. (They chose to stick with Your Party).<\/p>\n Your Party is a coalition of far-left factions and egos who can\u2019t stop fighting each other.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The perception that Your Party had descended into the realms of political farce was compounded in September when, just as Polanski was gaining momentum following his election as leader, Corbyn and Sultana began a new squabble<\/a> over the launch of its membership portal. Sultana claimed<\/a> the new party was being run as a \u201csexist boys\u2019 club,\u201d while Corbyn said<\/a> he was seeking legal advice.<\/p>\n A more substantive clash<\/a> within the party over the issue of trans rights came after Adnan Hussain, one of the pro-Gaza independent MPs who had joined Your Party, said that \u201cwomen\u2019s rights and safe spaces should not be encroached upon.\u201d Sultana, a strong supporter of trans rights, hit back, saying: \u201cTrans rights are human rights. Your Party will defend them \u2014 no ifs, no buts.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Hussain later quit the party, blaming<\/a> \u201cpersistent infighting\u201d and alleging prejudice towards Muslim MPs within the group. Days later, another of the pro-Gaza MPs, Iqbal Mohamed, followed Hussain out of the door, citing<\/a> \u201cfalse allegations and smears made against me and others.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor did matters improve when Your Party\u2019s launch conference at the end of last month began with the expulsion of several members who were found to also be members of other far-left parties, including the Socialist Workers Party. While Corbyn opened<\/a> the event with a call for \u201cunity\u201d and led a chant of \u201cfree, free Palestine,\u201d Sultana \u2014 who boycotted the opening day \u2014 railed<\/a> against \u201ca culture of witch-hunts\u201d in Your Party, which had led to \u201cbullying, intimidation and smears,\u201d and \u201cacts of deliberate sabotage.\u201d The party also voted<\/a> not to have a single leader, but to have a collective leadership, with a chairperson drawn from outside parliament.<\/p>\n \u201cYour Party is a coalition of far-left factions and egos who can\u2019t stop fighting each other,\u201d says Alex Hearn, director of the campaign group Labour Against Antisemitism. \u201cVoters have watched them botch everything from data management to their own party name.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AFP__20251109__83HP89T__v1__HighRes__BritainMilitaryWarHistoryRoyals-1-1024x640.jpg\")
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\n\t\tFrom left to right: Green Party leader Zack Polanski, Philip May and Hugh O\u2019Leary attend the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in central London on November 9, 2025. (HENRY NICHOLLS \/ POOL \/ AFP)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Zack_Polanski_Green_Party_London_Assembly_Member-1024x640.jpg\")
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\n\t\tUK Green Party leader Zack Polanski in 2022. (Rob Browne\/ Public domain)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/AFP__20251126__868X9RH__v1__HighRes__BritainIsraelPalestiniansConflictDemonstration-1024x640.jpg\")
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\n\t\tA protester takes part in a demonstration in support of Palestine Action, outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Britain\u2019s High Court, in central London on November 26, 2025. (CARLOS JASSO \/ AFP)<\/p>\n\n
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\n\t\tProtesters hold an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian banner outside a BBC broadcast of an event featuring the Green Party and anti-immigration Reform UK party in Birmingham, England, on June 28, 2024. (Peter Byrne \/ POOL \/ AFP)<\/p>\n\n
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\n\t\tJeremy Corbyn, center, with other supporters of prisoners being held on charges related to the banned Palestine Action group, in London on December 18, 2025. (Henry NICHOLLS \/ AFP)<\/p>\n\n
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\n\t\tMP Zarah Sultana arrives for an interview with the BBC in London on July 21, 2024. (Photo by BENJAMIN CREMEL \/ AFP)<\/p>\n
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