Zack Polanski Has Had The Week From Hell. Are His Days As Green Leader Numbered?

Zack Polanski has undoubtedly had one of the worst weeks of his political career.

The Green leader has been accused of a “dereliction of duty” by members of his own party after he chose to leave their Autumn conference early, skipping the deeply divisive “Zionism is racism” motion.

Green members ended up voting in favour of adopting it as official policy – and the party was promptly accused of racism by Jewish groups.

Polanski, who is himself Jewish, was banned from Israel.

Instead of joining the debate, the Green Party leader  – who has since revealed he would not have voted for the motion anyway – opted to go door-knocking.

He was hoping to get elected as the new MP for Holborn and St Pancras, Keir Starmer’s old constituency.

However, Labour ended up retaining their seat in the crunch by-election with a majority of over 3,000 – and Polanski is now facing calls to resign as leader.

He’s only been in the post for a year and was praised as the new darling of the left when he was elected on a landslide.

Of course, there’s no denying that he has transformed the party, bringing in scores of new members and inserting the Greens into the national conversation.

However, a once-close ally to the leader was dismissive about this success.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, they pointed out the party has slipped down to 11% in some opinion polls, which is roughly where the Greens were a year ago when Polanski took over.

If he stays on as the party leader, they risk “heading down the path to irrelevance” once more, according to the insider.

They also slated Polanski for his silence over the “Zionism is Racism” motion.

“I can’t respect someone who says nothing,” they said. “We’ve known about the motion for months. This is a moral failing, and it’s untenable.

“He’s just scared of pissing people off.”

They added: “He’s a skilled communicator and has done a lot for the party, but he’s always had his weaknesses and they have grown more significant in the last year.

“He spends too much time online, and if you’re only interacting with trolls and fans, that’s going to be a problem.”

Polanski attracted backlash this year for criticising the police response to the Golders Green terror attack, and rowed with Nigel Farage over a t-shirt with a guillotine on it.

But his own party only became publicly vocal about his flaws after the “Zionism is Racism” motion came to pass.

The chair of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, urged Polanski to resign in an interview with Times Radio on Friday.

The highly-respected former Green leader Caroline Lucas also slammed her successor for not attending the anti-Zionist debate, though she stopped short of calling for Polanski to step down.

Many pollsters believe the by-election result will not have helped Polanski’s cause either, after he came second with 8,928 votes to Labour candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali’s 12,292.

Savanta’s political research director, Chris Hopkins, said it looks like “the shine has come off” Polanski as the Greens have been “relegated” back to the fringes.

He claimed the party’s peak in March, when the Greens polled in second place behind Reform on 18%, was more fragile than previously assumed.

“The Green Party’s high point in the opinion polls earlier this year directly coincided with Labour’s low, where 2024 Labour voters, dissatisfied with Keir Starmer, were moving to the Greens,” he said.

“Andy Burnham succeeding Keir Starmer as prime minister, and the subsequent turn in Labour’s polling, has therefore shown how fragile that Green rise was.

“Labour’s recovery has, in some respects, relegated the Greens and Polanski back to the fringes of UK politics.

“But when the Green’s core voter base overlaps so much with Labour’s, it is almost guaranteed that any improvement’s in Labour’s standing will directly hurt the Greens’ prospect of electoral breakthroughs.”

Luke Tryl, UK Director of More in Common, warned Polanski has become a more divisive politician at a time when Burnham was appealing to progressives.

“We spoke to voters in Holborn and St Pancras who liked Polanski and felt he offered a hopeful voice in politics, but also others who felt his party had strayed from its environmental roots or a focus on cost of living, instead spending its time on more divisive issues,” Tryl told HuffPost UK.

“There’s likely a long way to go until the next election, but the Battle for the Left has shifted and – unless Polanski can build back his momentum – Labour now have the upper hand.”

Despite all this noise, a key ally to Polanski told HuffPost UK they feel “sanguine” about the result and the disquiet within Green ranks.

They suggested only a “vocal minority”, like former Jewish Greens chair Josh Alston who has called Polanski a “coward”, who wants the leader to resign.

“It’s pathetic,” they said. The ally suggested the Zionism is racism motion is “not even on most people’s radar”, and were confident Polanski would serve out the rest of his term as leader.

Another source told HuffPost UK most people in the Greens were “not bothered” that Polanski was not there at the debate, wanting him to prioritise the by-election campaign.

Other supporters have pointed out how the Greens did not win big in this constituency during the local council elections in May and so it was always going to be an uphill battle.

They noted that Labour’s vote share fell from 48.9% in 2024 to 45.8% in this by-election while the Greens’ soared to 32.8%.

That’s more than their 2024 vote share (10.4%) would have been even if combined with the independent candidate Andrew Feinstein (18.9%) who campaigned for Polanski this time around.

Others have suggested the answer to all this turmoil lies not in changing the leader but in changing the internal party structures.

Ex-party leader Lucas suggested doing just that – but that’s another source of division.

Green members chastised her, accusing of “jealousy” and “disloyalty” towards Polanski.

Even those furious about the way this week has panned out defended the system to HuffPost UK, saying their party democracy is “what makes the Greens special” and they must “maintain the soul of the one member one vote system”.

Another source said Green members are reluctant to change the party’s democratic structure based on a reaction to a vote.

As a growing number of voices express concern about the Greens’ direction, it’s going to be a mammoth effort to unite the party again.

Multiple senior figures told HuffPost UK they are waiting for the “dust to settle” before conversations begin about how to get back on track.

The question is whether Polanski has enough political capital left to unite the party again – and win back voters.