By coincidence, I meet Zack Polanski, the 42-year-old deputy leader of the Green party, in a cafe on the same bridge – Waterloo – where he was first arrested for his part in an Extinction Rebellion protest. “I was leading the charge on the very first day of the very first rally,” he begins. He has a dewy, wide-eyed look and quite a nerdy delivery, very enthusiastic, with no side to it. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you have, you’re all in. “I did not intend to get arrested. XR ran training on what to do if you get arrested and the ramifications of it, and I didn’t go to any of them, because I just wanted to be on the sidelines and chant. But partly from being an actor, I’ve got a really loud voice.” Someone asked him to lead the chant from the front, which he didn’t want to do. “I always think marginalised communities should be at the front, not me. And the only reason I say that is because there’s a parallel with how I see exemplary leadership – it’s not being out in the front, saying ‘Come this way’, it’s being within and moving together.” Still, he ended up at the front, and saw between one and two hundred police officers. “I remember one pointing at me, and I heard: ‘Get him’.” Before he knew it, he was in handcuffs.
Polanski, who is also chair of the London Assembly Environment Committee, is standing for leader of the Green party, promising a radical new “eco-populism”. When he first announced his intention to stand, the move was portrayed in some quarters as a bid to oust Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, current co-leaders, which he rejects. The Greens elect new co-leaders every two years (Ramsay and Denyer had a three-year term because of the general election; both are now MPs. Denyer has already announced she won’t stand, but Ramsay is running again, in a joint bid alongside fellow new MP Ellie Chowns). Polanski says it’s a perfectly workable model to have a Green MP as a parliamentary party leader and a separate leader of the party at large. “Someone who can lead the party for the country, and be accountable to the membership … I’ve reflected on this because the Green party has never had a solo male leader before, albeit a gay and Jewish one.” He’s bashed these questions around in his head: the tensions between identity and class politics, which I guess could be distilled into “could a man ever lead a radical progressive party?”; the idea of the strong leader (rather than co-leaders) and how much the media needs to see one – and whether it’s against the Green DNA to have one. He’s basically decided that, as valid as all the arguments and counter-arguments are, sod it, he’s going for it.
