Zack Polanski: the 'eco-populist' running for Green Party leader

The Labour Party is "extraordinarily fortunate that the Green Party are shit". That was the "withering" verdict of an anonymous minister after Labour's recent underwhelming local-election performance. Keir Starmer's government may have "imploded" over cuts to support for the elderly and disabled but the Greens have "flatlined" in the polls, leaving Reform UK as the "main receptacle for popular disillusionment", said Owen Jones in The Guardian.

"Could that finally change?" Zack Polanski, the Green Party's deputy leader and a London Assembly member, has launched a bid for leadership, "with a pitch representing a gear shift in strategy" for the party. Once a Liberal Democrat activist, Polanski is "now firmly on the party's left and is offering a clearly defined left-populist message".

'Eco-populism' agenda

Confronting Nigel Farage's "infectious populism" is a driving force behind Polanski's run, said Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman. And climate policy is a key battleground. Farage is using net zero as a "culture war sledgehammer" against the government, and Polanski wants to challenge Labour on this issue, too, but "from the left". "I'm really angry about net zero," he told the magazine. "I'm angry that the government is expecting some of the poorest in this country to step up" and pay for it. While those words sound as if they come straight "out of Farage's own playbook", they reflect Polanski's broader "eco-populism" agenda – including taxing the wealthy and big business to fund the green transition.

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Polanski also wants a "bolder" stance on Nato, calling his party's current position "out of date", said Byline Times. "I think the age of Nato is now fully over," he told the paper, citing Donald Trump's aggressive stance towards other Nato members, including his interest in annexing Greenland. But this is a "fringe position" among the British public, more than three-quarters of whom support the UK remaining inside the alliance, according to YouGov polling.

Insurgents vs. professionals

As with the last Green Party leadership race, in 2021, members face a choice between "more sober, election-focused professionals" and "insurgent activists", said Peter Walker in The Guardian. Current co-leader Adrian Ramsay and his fellow MP and new running mate Ellie Chowns can point to general-election and local-election wins. The pair can "thus present themselves" as "exemplars of the party's long-term mission to build up a Westminster presence via local government, with both serving as councillors in the areas they eventually won". Polanski's rebuttal isn't that their approach is "wrong" but that it's too cautious, and Green messaging needs to be transmitted to voters "with more urgency".

But his leadership bid will also invite scrutiny, not least over a bizarre 2013 incident reported by The Sun. Then working as a hypnotherapist, Polanski used the technique to try to enlarge a female client's breasts – an idea he said came from the client, who was actually the journalist from The Sun. He said his goal was to highlight how hypnotherapy could improve body image, and emphasised that no money was exchanged. "I've apologised for it and I stick by that apology," he later said. "I'm a grown adult, and I have choice about what I do and what I don't do."