30 March 2026

Zack Polanski parks his tanks on Labour’s lawn

The Green leader is courting union support as his left insurgency continues

There could be more trouble on the Prime Minister’s left flank after the Times revealed that Green leader Zack Polanski is courting several trade union leaders. Polanski told the paper it was “crucial” for his party to “connect with the organised Labour movement”. He claimed that the link between the party and the unions was “starting to break”.

Can he sever the century-long historic link between the Labour Party and the Labour movement, which has weathered wars, global depressions and bouts of electoral oblivion? That will be very hard to do and take more than a few friendly phone calls. In the end it is probably not in the interest of most unions, which, while experiencing a period of disaffection with the political direction of the government, have nevertheless done quite well out of its first 18 months in power. Their main prize has been the Employment Rights Bill, which even in its watered-down form is one of the most significant changes in the relationship between workers and bosses of recent times.

Unite recently announced it would reduce its affiliation funding to the Labour Party by 40 per cent, a stinging but not fatal rebuke. Meanwhile, GMB is peeved about the net zero transition but it doesn’t really have anywhere to go and it’s certainly not heading for the Greens.

For Polanski, an attempt to nab Labour’s union donors as he tries to replace the party on the left is comparable to Nigel Farage courting rich business people and siphoning their funding as he attempts to replace the Tories on the right.

In the handbook of insurgent British political parties – which Farage basically wrote and which Polanski is following from the left – this is the latest step. People around the Reform leader find remarkable the extent to which Polanski has mirrored Farage’s approach.

First there was the relentless focus on building membership numbers and “flooding the zone” on social media, which translated into a ticking up of public interest and a rise in opinion polls. Next came the dash for donors and the hiring of plausible policy wonks to draw up plans for a future government (Verdant, a Green-aligned think tank, launched last week). After that, the prize will be a few big-name defections on the Green benches. Watch this space.

This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here

[Further reading: How to stop a fuel panic]