Since he was elected leader of the Green Party on 2 September, Zack Polanski has only had three hours off. The London Assembly member won 85 per cent of the vote in a leadership contest during which the party gained more coverage than it ever has before. Polanski’s winning ticket was a platform of “eco-populism”, characterised by a louder, pugnacious style of leadership directly intended to take on Nigel Farage. In the month since his victory, the Greens have gained more than 10,000 new members.
“Actually, I’m hoping by the time people read this interview we’ll be at around 80,000 members and rising,” Polanski said, when we met on a chilly September morning at a café in Fulham. Despite his bolshie media presence and charismatic slogans, he seemed slightly skittish, anxiously asking me to watch his things while he had his photograph taken. He was dressed, as he often is in campaign videos, in a dark blue suit. Unusually for a party leader, he arrived alone, without an entourage of press officers or political advisers, much as he would have done for interviews before the leadership election. Perhaps this is the nature of leading a smaller party, but it adds an authenticity to Polanski’s presence: he has carried on doing things his own way.
We spoke the week after the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference, at which Ed Davey pulled off some of his signature mad-dad stunts, complete with a marching band, a cricket match and a zip wire. Polanski was keen to point out that if the Scottish Greens membership numbers (it is affiliated with but separate from the Green Party of England and Wales) were added to his Green Party’s 78,000 members, then they would have more members in the UK than the Lib Dems. “I think a lot of the reason why that’s happening is because people in this country resonate with so many of the Greens’ policies, they just haven’t heard them before.”
He would like the Green Party to overtake the Lib Dems as the UK’s third political party in parliament, a feat that would require the Greens to win more than 70 seats at the next election. But Polanski is confident it can be done. “In London, where I am an Assembly member, we already have more Assembly members than the Lib Dems,” he said. Turning his focus to Davey, Polanski became more overtly critical. “I think Ed Davey’s conference was really revealing of a party that don’t have a strong story to tell,” he said – a criticism that is also often levelled at the Prime Minister. “Instead we’ve got all of these stunts which undoubtedly grabbed major attention, but I don’t think there’s anything behind them.”
What makes Polanski’s disparagement of the Lib Dems more interesting is that until 2017, he was one. “I’ve always supported proportional representation,” he said, “that’s always been one of my number one issues.” He successfully stood as a Lib Dem candidate for the London Assembly in 2016 in the Barnet and Camden constituency. That same year, Polanski took part in a student debate hustings on the upcoming Brexit vote: he was up against the then Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and Keir Starmer MP. It was debating Bennett in particular that began to win Polanski over to the Greens, and in 2017 a friend who was already a Green Party member bought him a ticket to the party’s conference. “He said to me, from everything I’ve heard you say, you’ll be so much more at home in this party. And he was totally right.”
Polanski has pulled the party further to the left, embracing a socialist, anti-inequality, anti-poverty and ostensibly anti-billionaire platform. He is a major proponent of a wealth tax and often points to the late anthropologist David Graeber’s 99 per cent vs the 1 per cent frame as a way of cutting through with the public. Matt Zarb-Cousin, a former media spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn during his time as Labour leader, had an instrumental role in Polanski’s campaign. He founded Greens Organise, a campaign group that aims to influence the Green Party to adopt more socialist policies and views. Zarb-Cousin, as well as former Corbynites such as the economics commentator Grace Blakeley have become high-profile members of Polanski’s new Greens.
But not everyone is convinced. Shortly after Polanski announced his bid in May, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announced their plans to found a new left-wing party. Speculation has mounted as to whether the two forces – the Greens and this nascent new party – will work together to target Labour from the left. In an interview with the New Statesman in early September, Corbyn confirmed his openness to working with Polanski, but was quick to add that his new party would be “more socialist” than the Greens. Sultana too has made this distinction.
“I’ve heard people say we’re not a socialist party, and it’s absolutely absurd,” Polanski said. “I’m very honest about my socialism and my progressivism. The party doesn’t necessarily use the word socialist because I think it doesn’t resonate with lots of people.” But he added: “Ultimately, if you are wanting to tax multimillionaires and billionaires, and you want to nationalise public services, then I don’t know what else your version of socialism is.”
Pointing to a recent move by four of the Independent Alliance MPs (of which Corbyn and Sultana are a part) to vote with the Conservatives against Labour’s plans to charge private schools VAT, Polanski said: “I’m not trying to create divides where they don’t exist, but we’ve had MPs – not Zarah – but MPs who have talked about or voted not to abolish exemptions on private schools, which does not strike me as the bastion of socialism,” he said.
On 3 October, Polanski will set out a green, socialist vision in his inaugural Green Party conference speech as leader. He had been in the process of writing it before our interview. Some around him have tried to encourage him to try Davey-like stunts to help the party cut through: “I knew instinctively that wasn’t true. What we need is very clear messaging that can cut through and that people can understand.” This includes snappy policies on nationalising water (“the sewage companies shouldn’t be able to pump sewage into our water and charge us extra for the privilege”) but also a wider discussion of what Polanski describes as the failed experiment of privatisation. “It’s often talked about that if water actually goes into public hands, that would be some sort of experiment, but actually it’s the other way around,” he said. “Thatcher sold off all our public assets, and it’s been a disaster.”
I point out that this vision – of a return to an era of increased public ownership – sounds a lot like the one set out by Andy Burnham in his recent interview with the New Statesman. Polanski is thinly critical of the Manchester mayor – not of his ideas, but of his being a Labour politician. “I’m not surprised that the Labour Party are also worried about that,” he said, “but the problem the Labour Party have, and Andy Burnham will certainly have, is that they’ve been corporate-captured. They’ve taken millions and millions of pounds from private healthcare companies, from oil and gas, from arms trade companies.”
In Polanski’s view, this makes it far harder for Labour politicians to stride out on more radical policies. “If you recognise that what you’re doing is unpopular with the public, then you’ve got a choice to make. You either annoy the people who have paid you to win the election, and I think they’ll quickly turn on you. Or you do the right thing, but you don’t get any more donations. I don’t think they’ll have any alternative to that.”
Polanski does not simply plan to make the case for a new economic system for Britain; he also plans to take on Reform and Nigel Farage head on. Shortly after his election as leader, Polanski launched a podcast, Bold Politics. In it, he and a prominent figure (guests have included the commentator Ash Sarkar, the author Gary Stevenson and the open borders campaigner Zoe Gardiner) to discuss broad ideas and shifts on the left. It is clearly intended as a left-wing counter to Farage’s prime-time daily GB News show, and the right-wing drift of so many “podcast bros”. I ask if Polanski would consider inviting Farage to contribute to an episode. “I’d have [him] on my podcast in the next hour. I couldn’t do that quickly enough,” Polanski said. “Very cynically, the podcast went to number three in the UK very quickly which was great. I think this would send it to number one.”
Holding Farage to account and calling out some of his recent rhetoric (Polanski describes it as “sinister”) is a vital job for any leader to the left of Reform, the Green leader said. “Farage is a house of cards built on lies and misinformation,” he said. “He gave that speech [on Reform’s immigration plans] and very quickly the think tank he was quoting from had to distance themselves from the stats that he gave.” Polanski is keen to debate Farage and Reform in public. He was lined up to take part in a discussion with Richard Tice at Glastonbury, but Tice pulled out at the last minute. “He decided it wasn’t a safe space for him, which makes him a bit of a snowflake,” Polanski said.
I ask Polanski if there is anything he admires about Farage. During his campaign to become Green Party leader, he was candid about his desire to become the Farage of the left. “It sticks in my mouth to say that I admire Nigel Farage [for] anything,” he said after a long pause, fidgeting slightly in his chair. “But I think something that he’s undoubtedly skilled on is to connect with the problems of people in this country and cut through on the mediascape.” Though he is clear that, fundamentally, the pair disagree: “I think he ultimately stands for divisive, hateful politics.”
On immigration, Farage and Reform have dominated: this is an area where the left often struggles. But Polanski wants to change that. He is clear that he is “unashamedly pro-migration” but told me there is a “story there that needs to be told to win people over”. Polanski’s world-view is more optimistic and empathetic than the view he ascribes to Farage and Starmer. “I think people in this country are fundamentally decent and compassionate, they just want a migration system that is fair,” he said. And yet, there is a shared consensus between the three politicians that Britain must stop small-boat crossings – a position the Green Party has never before held. “We absolutely need to stop the boats,” Polanski said, “but let’s stop the boats by offering safe and legal routes to asylum and not having people clinging on to dinghies for dear life.”
Zack Polanski was born David Paulden in Manchester in November 1982. He changed his name when he was 18. When I asked him why, he hesitated slightly. “The surname is easier to tell than the first name,” he said, adding: “I’m going to be slightly evasive because I am protecting my family.” Polanski changed his name from David to Zack because there was a person in his family, also called David, who was abusive. “It would be big David and little David, and I grew up very unhappy with that,” Polanski told me.
His surname – Polanski – goes back to his family’s roots. In the early 20th century, his family, who were Jews, escaped from Latvian pogroms via Ukraine and Poland. On arriving in Britain, they anglicised “Polanski”, becoming Paulden, because of the anti-Semitism they faced. Polanski told me he’d originally believed his family had changed their name because of anti-Semitism in Latvia, not the UK. “I just thought it was a really stark reminder of how we sometimes romanticise our past.”
After studying in Wales and the US, Polanski returned to England to work as an actor. (His favourite performers, he told me, are Natalie Portman and Mark Rylance.) In Manchester he did a lot of work with the “theatre of the oppressed” method, a form of performance that assists asylum seekers or homeless people by role-playing job interviews or meetings with the council. The experience sparked his interest in activism and politics, and the places they intersect with performance.
In August, on a train back from Forwards, the Bristol music festival, Polanski met the Irish actress Denise Gough. “We just had a conversation about politics and particularly her putting her head above the parapet to talk about Palestine,” he said. “It really spoke to me about the power actors can have when they can communicate authentically.” This is something Polanski gets asked about a lot.
“When I first became a politician, people were like, ‘Politics and lying must be very similar,’” he said. “But actually, a really quality theatre actor can tell the truth and communicate really authentically.” The same, he said, is true of politics. “I think the most effective politicians – I think of Tony Benn – they have a way of speaking where you knew everything they were feeling was real and you could feel it too.”
This is Polanski’s political strategy: authentic, progressive, popular storytelling. The chaotic launch of Your Party is a gift to the Greens: an opportunity to become the leading populist voice of the left. With less than a year to go before next May’s local elections, in which the Greens expect to win big, Polanski doesn’t have long to cement his position. But with a growth in members, recognition and, eventually, votes, Zack Polanski is clearly determined to ensure his Green Party is here to stay.
[Further reading: The delusional joy of Labour conference]
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This article appears in the 01 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Life and Fate
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