London could wake up to a sea of Green on 8 May if current voting projections are to be believed. According to new polling by Ipsos, shared exclusively with the New Statesman, around half of Londoners are considering voting for Zack Polanski’s Green Party on 7 May.
The threat the Greens pose to Labour in the battle for the progressive left is alive and kicking. In just a few weeks’ time, the Green Party hopes to overturn Labour incumbency in Hackney, Haringey and Newham. Now, Ipsos’s April data shows the Green Party sitting just two points behind Labour. Polanski’s renegade party is thought to be able to win over one in five 2025 Labour voters.
The Gorton and Denton by-election – in which the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer won a 4,000-vote majority – has changed the narrative. No longer are the Greens necessarily seen as a “wasted vote”. This is important going into the May elections: the Green Party now has the potential to steal Labour’s base among progressive city-dwelling graduates. Are they about to become the Reform of the left?
Keiran Pedley, the UK director of politics at Ipsos, pointed out that the Greens have been gaining on Labour for some time. “The Greens have the potential to steal Labour’s modern-day base,” Pedley said, “which tends to be among urban graduate types who are motivated by a desire for radical change and also increasingly by the cost-of-living”.
Though Labour has historically done well in industrial areas across the north of England, for example, or in Wales, recent elections have seen the party depend more on younger voters in cities. Many of these voters, who perhaps were staunch Labour supporters under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, have been hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis or are furious with the government over Gaza. Now they are looking towards the Greens as an alternative. “If the Greens can win over and retain that core younger urban base, then Labour won’t have many other places to go,” Pedley said.
However, it could be easy to overstate the Green surge. The party’s stratospheric rise in popularity since Polanski’s election in 2025 saw it break 20 per cent in the polls, sitting in second place to Reform, shortly after the Gorton and Denton by-election. But there are some caveats. As Ipsos’s polling showed, the party remains less popular among voters over 55 – just 25 per cent said they would consider voting Green. “The Greens have got great potential,” Pedley said, “but there is a bit of a ceiling… they’ve got a way to go with older voters, part of that is a values thing.” This makes sense.
Polanski has, since he was elected, pitched himself as a politician for millennials and generation Z: he makes TikToks, appears at club nights and has started his own podcast. The Greens’ core values align with those of younger voters too: Polanski has said he wants to “end rip-off Britain” and is “unapologetically pro-migration”. And it has had results: Ipsos’s polling shows almost six in ten voters under 35 are now considering voting for the Green Party in the 7 May elections.
These aspects are all less likely to enamour his party to pensioners whose assets could be hit by a future Green wealth tax or for whom immigration remains a key concern. Pedley added: “Older voters tend to be more concerned about the conditions of the roads and pavements and crime and policing and these sorts of issues.” The seemingly unlikely possibility of Polanski walking into No 10 Downing Street could depend on the party reaching out to some among this cohort.
It is important to recognise the impact that Polanski himself has had on the Greens’ turbocharged performance in the polls. “Having one figurehead always felt like it was going to be important for the Greens,” Pedley said. (In last year’s Green Party leadership election, Polanski ran against a joint ticket of Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay; Ramsay had previously co-led the Greens with Carla Denyer.)
“It’s a very competitive political environment. There are multiple parties polling above 10 per cent,” Pedley said. “Getting airtime is difficult”. Polanski, as a former actor, seems to have been particularly good at capturing the zeitgeist on the left, pushing himself closer to becoming a household name than several of his predecessors, except, perhaps, Caroline Lucas.
Labour is aware of the threat posed by the Greens. The party has recently ramped up its attacks on Polanski and his team. The Green Party leader was even name-dropped in Rachel Reeves’s budget speech, a crucial sign of how worried they are. Pedley concluded: “If the Greens can establish an effective geographical foothold in different areas of Britain in these local elections, it can be a real presence at the next general election.”
[Further reading: Inside Zack Polanski’s inner circle]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment