'Starmer needs to be more scared of us than Reform': Zack Polanski on how the Greens can outflank Farage

If you want to easily understand Zack Polanski’s “eco-populism” pitch to the Green Party, consider what he drinks: English breakfast tea with oat milk.

The current deputy leader of the Green Party arrives at a community cafe in Hackney Wick on his bike. He’s been zipping around London all day, combining his role as a London assembly member with his bid for the party’s leadership in September’s election.

As Keir Starmer’s government tacks right and Reform UK prove themselves an increasingly serious electoral force, Polanski thinks the Greens can offer a left-wing populist alternative to Nigel Farage’s party and a natural home for progressive voters.

“The biggest job we have is to make sure that Keir Starmer is more scared of losing votes and seats to the Green Party than to Reform,” he says. After 2024, the Greens rocked up to parliament with a record four MPs, taking seats off both Labour and the Conservatives.

That election also proved, in the eyes of experts, that two-party politics is in its death throes, as votes increasingly feel politically barren. “We’ve got to race against the clock to make sure that those people in future aren’t voting for a toxic party that are made up of millionaire MPs serving billionaires, who are looking to divide communities and don’t offer any real solutions,” Polanski says.

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‘The appeasement of the far right feels like the inevitable path’

At 18, Polanski changed his name. He was not born Zack Polanski, but David Paulden. “Growing up my stepdad was called David, and I didn’t like being a little version of my stepdad,” he says. Zack, he explains, was inspired by the Jewish refugee Zach from Michelle Magorian’s wartime evacuation novel Goodbye Mister Tom. Polanski was taken as his grandfather’s original surname, one he initially thought was changed to flee Nazi Germany but later learned was altered to avoid antisemitism in the UK.

Before his election to the London assembly as a Green in 2021, Polanski was a Liberal Democrat, trying twice to get elected. It was former Green leader Natalie Bennet talking about refugee rights which turned his head, he says, an example of how strong stances from parties can win converts.

A political awakening came when studying drama in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to flying to the US, he wouldn’t have been able to name the leader of the opposition. But studying as George W Bush won re-election, he saw insidious racism coming to the fore and experienced explicit homophobia for the first time. It struck him that the UK often picked up on the US’s worst instincts. “I don’t think I knew back then how accurate that was in terms of how we just seem to be running full force at fascism in the same way Trump is. I’m not saying Starmer is there, but the appeasement of the far right, and the appeasement of Farage feel like the inevitable path unless someone and some party turn it around,” he says.

‘People who used to vote Labour are so utterly disappointed’

By offering a populist vision to solve the country’s problems – blame billionaires, tax them, be patriotic and proud of communities and country – Zack Polanski hopes the Greens can pull the disaffected away from Reform.

But the dynamic is tricky. Keir Starmer’s perceived courting of Reform votes appears misguided on the data. Polling shows just 9% of Labour voters who are considering switching are considering switching to Reform. Much of Farage’s success has come at the expense of a collapsing Tory vote.

There is a long way to travel from Green to Reform: 81% of 2024 Reform voters said there was no chance at all of voting Green, putting them behind the Tories and the Lib Dems in the conversion queue. However, interestingly, this was ever-so-slightly lower than the number who said they’d never vote Labour.

So are the Greens in a direct fight with Reform, for the same voters? Polanski is clear that the biggest battle is to peel off Labour voters. But he believes there’s a portion of the country who are up for grabs – beyond a small group of “explicitly racist” group of Reform voters the Greens can’t and shouldn’t chase. “Having had a lot of conversations, I think a lot of them are just really disillusioned with the political establishment, and want to see bills lowered, want to see public services, and want to see politicians who actually listen and turn up,” he says.

He believes there’s a broad coalition of voters in search of a political home: not just disaffected Labour voters, but underwhelmed Lib Dems and Conservatives worried about the natural world and democracy. Here, he believes the Greens’ widening from a single-issue party to a wider movement for social justice can land.

“I think there’s a whole bloc there, but I’m making no secret that I think the biggest bloc is people who used to vote Labour, who are so utterly disappointed,” he says. “It’s not just about Keir Starmer. I think they’re never going back. They’ve not left the Labour Party, the Labour Party’s left them.”

It’s not just voters cast adrift from the Labour Party who the Greens can win over. In parliament, MPs deprived of the whip include former leader Jeremy Corbyn and two-child-benefit rebels including Zarah Sultana. Zack Polanski smiles when Big Issue asks what the conversations to bring them over to the Greens have been like.

“I obviously can’t talk about private conversations I’m having with MPs,” he says. “If people support the values of the Green Party then they should join the Green Party. I think it’s very clear, I think, at this point, that Zarah has no intention of going back to the Labour Party.”

He’s unbothered at the prospect of MPs flirting with the Greens to give Starmer a scare. “I think if they want to do that, and then that pushes Starmer, then I’m a willing participant in that,” he says.

‘What does it look like if society could be designed so we spend more time with our loved ones?’

The incident which just won’t leave Zack Polanski alone is a bizarre Sun article from 2013 headlined: “TIT-NOTISED: Can you really THINK your boobs bigger?”. Then a hypnotherapist, the pre-politics Polanski hypnotised a Sun reporter as a safe and cheap alternative to a boob job. The reporter experienced growth for 10 days. Polanski has done, by his count, 25 interviews since announcing his bid for leadership. This presumably means 25 journalists asking about it. “I think most people laugh it off and move on and focus on where I’m going next,” is his stock response.

But there was a lesson in the incident. “I went on the BBC the next day to explain that it didn’t represent anything that I was doing, it certainly was not something I’d charge for. That was meant to be how the Sun was going to write it up, but there was a misrepresentation,” he says. “It was a first brush with right-wing media. I would never talk to the Sun again, or get involved with the Sun again. It certainly fuelled some of my work now for media reform.”

Voting for the Greens is a different experience in British politics. Its MPs are not whipped, meaning votes are not enforced – compare it to the experience of Labour MPs who found themselves independent after voting against the party line on two-child benefits. Policies are decided democratically by its members. It leaves the leader in a strange place, without an iron first. As it seeks more MPs, how can a leader make sure promises to voters are kept? 

“No matter how many people you’ve got, if you organise yourself in a democratic way then people should always have the right to vote in the way that their constituencies want,” says Polanski. “I think that iron fist has been disastrous for politics.”

He says the party’s clear stance on Gaza has seen it connect with a new range of voters. “When I speak to many people who have joined the Green Party because of Gaza, they stayed because of all the other policies around social justice” he says. But he believes the next bidividing line could be “not being obsessed with the idea of people getting a job, and actually fighting for people’s right to be lazy”.

He says: “I think the next frontier of politics is gonna be around what leisure and spare time looks like? What does it look like if society could be designed so we spend more time with our loved ones and doing the things we actually want to do?”

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