Zack Polanski eyes eight London councils as Green Party Uk rises
Zack Polanski, the 43-year-old leader of green party uk, is seeking a breakthrough in British local elections this week as more than 5,000 council seats go to voters on Thursday. YouGov said the party could come first in as many as eight of London’s 32 councils.
The vote covers 136 local authorities, including London and other major UK cities. For Polanski, who won the leadership contest last September with 20,411 votes, the result will test whether the party can turn stronger polling into council gains.
Zack Polanski and Labour
Polanski is presenting himself as a progressive alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. He describes himself as an “eco-populist,” and after his election as leader he promised to “work every single day to deliver environmental, social, racial and economic justice.”
His route to the Green Party was not direct. He began his political career with the Liberal Democrats, standing as a councillor in north London in 2015 and as a London Assembly candidate in 2016 before joining the Greens in 2017.
Polanski's rise since September
Polanski was elected to the London Assembly in 2021 and deputy leader of the Green Party in 2022. In February, the party won its first-ever parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton, a seat that had been held by Labour for nearly a century.
Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the Greens have become “far more left-liberal and pro-Gaza focused than environmentally concerned” under Polanski’s leadership. Bale also said the party’s poll ratings have risen partly because of Polanski’s communication skills, Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon, and frustration among left-liberal voters at Labour’s hardline rhetoric on immigration.
Gorton and Denton precedent
Polanski grew up as David Paulden in a Jewish community in Salford, Greater Manchester. At 18, he changed his anglicised name to a version of his original family name to recognise his Jewish heritage, later studying drama at Aberystwyth University in Wales and working in community theatre before becoming a hypnotherapist and mental health counsellor.
He is openly homosexual and proudly vegan. For him, Thursday’s vote is the next measure of whether the Greens can extend the momentum from February into local government seats, with London the clearest place where YouGov says the party has a chance to finish first.
