It has been a rollercoaster year for the Green Party of England and Wales. It’s little more than 12 months since the election of the charismatic Zack Polanski as party leader. And months later, the equally charismatic Hannah Spencer became the Greens’ fifth MP. But Polanski couldn’t repeat this win in Keir Starmer’s former constituency of Holborn and St Pancras in London, losing to Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali.
Back in February, when Spencer won the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton, it was the party’s first ever Westminster byelection win and the Greens were in the pink. There had been a string of positive opinion polls, and Starmer’s Labour party was in the doldrums. Such was the party’s confidence and momentum that Polanski even voiced his ambition for the Greens to “replace” Labour as the anchor party of the UK centre-left.
