The Labour party is “extraordinarily fortunate that the Green party are shit”, or so was the withering assessment of an anonymous minister quoted in this newspaper a few days ago. This may seem overly harsh on the Greens’ fortunes: after all, they jumped from one to four MPs at the last election, unseating a Labour shadow cabinet minister in the process, and now boast a record 859 councillors across 181 councils. But even as Keir Starmer’s government has imploded in office – above all because of cuts in state support to elderly and disabled people – the Greens have flatlined in the polls, with Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform positioning itself as the main receptacle for popular disillusionment.
Could that finally change? Zack Polanski, who is the party’s deputy leader and sits in the London assembly, has launched a bid for the top job, with a pitch representing a gear shift in strategy. Polanski has been on a journey: once a Liberal Democrat activist, he is now firmly on the party’s left and is offering a clearly defined left-populist message. This isn’t a revolt per se – the party’s ultra-democratic ethos mandates a leadership election every two years – but Polanski is clearly challenging the party establishment. The Greens, he tells me, need someone who will “challenge wealth and power” and speak “really, really clearly and unapologetically” when doing so.
