The Rise and Fall of Zack Polanski
On 5 May 2025, Zack Polanski announced his campaign to become leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. He told the Guardian that his party should challenge the insurgent force of Reform UK. A savvy social media campaign and impassioned base of supporters elected him leader with a landslide. Under Polanski’s leadership, the party’s performance in opinion polls soared to nearly 20%. In recent months, that growth has reversed. One year after Polanski took over the Greens, they are nearly back to where they started.
Zack Polanski, born David Paulden in 1982, is the descendant of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe. He changed his name at the age of 18 to reflect “pride in [his] identity.” Polanski was raised in Greater Manchester before studying drama at university, then relocating to London to work as an actor. He was also a hypnotherapist - where he used hypnosis to treat physical and mental health conditions. In 2013, Polanski offered to enlarge a journalist’s breasts and featured in an article for The Sun where he claimed their size had increased. Six days after its publication, Polanski defended the article in a radio interview. This contradicts a later statement in which he suggested apologising for the claim within days of the article’s publication. The incident has circulated among tabloid media during Polanski’s tenure as a frontline politician.
During the 2010s, Polanski was an active member of the Liberal Democrats. A conversation with former leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett resulted in him leaving the Lib Dems for the Greens. In 2021, he was elected a Member of the London Assembly to represent the entire city on the closed-list proportional representation ballot. Five years after joining the Greens, Polanski became its deputy leader in 2022. His rapid rise did not end there.
Labour won a resounding victory at the 2024 general election. Reform UK won 5 seats, whilst the Greens earned 4. Over the following months, Reform grew its membership size and in the opinion polls. The Greens remained stagnant. Under the leadership of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, they featured little in national political debate. Reform broke through at the 2025 local elections to win control of 10 councils. The Greens suffered an underwhelming performance. This created fertile ground for a charismatic politician to supplant the party’s stale status quo.
The Green Party’s constitution mandates elections for its leader must occur every two years. In the 2025 election, Polanski faced a joint ticket composed of Ramsay and Ellie Chowns. Both were MPs representing rural, formerly conservative areas. An unexpectedly feisty competition followed in which insults were exchanged. Nonetheless, Polanski’s social media campaign garnered millions of views and hundreds of new party members. He was elected as leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in a landslide victory - 84% of the vote compared to Ramsay and Chowns’ 15%.
In this article, I’ll explore the meteoric rise of the Greens under Polanski’s tenure as leader and its gradual fall.
Rise
Sir Keir Starmer’s government pursued a complex and nuanced array of policies. To appease the political left, it commenced the nationalisation of the British railway, introduced protections for renters and workers and funnelled billions worth of additional investment into the NHS. Elsewhere, they proposed to tighten the eligibility for disability benefits, toughen rhetoric on immigration and express support for Israel in the Gaza war in a bid to appease Reform UK. The later three policies alienated younger and Muslim voters. This drove a reduction in Starmer’s net favourability from minus 26% in October 2024 to minus 32% in August 2025. Polanski aimed to capitalise on such disaffected Labour voters. “I want to say to the millions of people who have supported Labour, you’re not leaving the Labour party. The Labour party has left you,” he told the Guardian in summer 2025.
Polanski attributes the actions of corporations as the cause of climate change - not those of individuals. To tackle what he describes as the climate and inequality crises, Polanski proposes increased taxes on wealth. He claims "the same greed that drives inequality is the same greed that’s torching our planet.” Polanski’s marriage of the bread and butter issues of economics and the environment garnered more traction to his party. This earned him the label “eco-populist.”
Where Polanski differs from his predecessors, who also supported a wealth tax, is his pugnacious communications style. Polanski’s use of social media to build an “authentic connection” with the audience is essential to his brand as a politician. It mirrors that of Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, who claims to be an outsider challenging the political establishment. Polanski’s masterfully edited and rhythmically scripted short-form social media videos went viral - his leadership campaign launch earned 1.5 million views on X, another discussing small boat crossings attracted nearly 3 million and a party political broadcast titled “Let’s Make Hope Normal Again” garnered 11 million.
Consistent appearances on Sunday morning politics shows, talk radio and the creation of a podcast titled Bold Politics furthered Polanski’s influence. As a result, the Green Party’s membership size exploded. When Polanski became leader on 2 September 2025, the party was estimated to have 65,000 members. Within the aid of the collapse of Your Party, a socialist rival party, that number increased to 75,000 by mid-September. It crossed 100,000 on 12 October, surpassing the Liberal Democrats, before exceeding the Conservatives one week later. The Greens also ascended in the opinion polls. Within two months of Polanski’s election as party leader, the Greens rose from 10% to 15% according to Politico. By the end of 2025, they were neck and neck with Labour and the Conservatives. Meanwhile, Polanski boasted the highest approval rating of any major political party leader in one Opinium poll. At that point, he appeared unstoppable.
The parallels between Polanski and Farage are plentiful. Both lead populist parties - albeit on opposing sides of the political spectrum - who pit ordinary people against the elite. Farage described his recent contest in the Clacton by-election as “people versus the establishment," whilst Polanski embraces the label, claiming his party “stands for the 99% against the 1%.” Reform and the Greens have exposed widespread frustration with the traditional parties of government, a loss of trust in institutions and social media to their electoral advantage. Reform rose throughout 2024 and 2025. Consequently, Starmer’s policy pivoted to accommodate them, resulting in a loss of faith among progressives. That enabled the Greens to soar. In 2025, Polanski claimed his party should learn from the successes of Farage to become “louder and more effective.” They did. To an extent, Polanski’s rise was caused by Farage’s.
On 22 January 2026, Andrew Gwynne resigned as the Member of Parliament for Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester. In the subsequent by-election, a race between the Greens and Reform ensued. The Greens selected Hannah Spencer, a self-employed plumber and councillor, as its candidate. Reform nominated Matt Goodwin, an academic and talk show host, to contest the election. The campaign to succeed Gwynne was a publicised and contentious affair. Ultimately Spencer won the by-election held on 26 February. Her 40% of the vote defeated Goodwin’s 28%. This marked a dramatic increase in support for the Greens. They had previously won third place in the constituency. Spencer became the party’s fifth MP, its first from the North of England and the only Green to win a parliamentary by-election. In the immediate aftermath, the Greens surpassed 200,000 members.
At the 2026 local elections, the Greens sustained their electoral success. In London, Greens gained control of mayoralties and borough councils in Hackney, Lewisham, Haringey and Waltham Forest. Victories were also earned in Norwich and Hastings. In the Projected National Share (PNS), a rough translation of local election results into national vote share, the Greens placed second. They won 18% of the vote. As a result, Polanski claimed “the new politics is the Green Party versus Reform.” By then, however, cracks began to show in the Polanski surge.
Fall
In May 2026, Polanski’s party registered with 18% in the opinion polls - the Greens have since collapsed to 12%. A series of public-facing blunders, mishaps and errors defined his downfall.
In May 2026, the British Red Cross denied Polanski’s claim - which he made when campaigning for Greens’ deputy leadership - that he was a spokesperson for the charity. Polanski also asserted he worked as a spokesperson for the campaign Axe the Housing Act, although it was revealed his work was unofficial.
One week later, Polanski admitted he may have failed to pay council tax. Waltham Forest borough council is investigating whether he should have paid the tax whilst he was living on a houseboat in the area. The Greater London Authority ruled that Polanski's living arrangements were not within their scope and cleared him of having breached the London Assembly's code of conduct. The Green Party also confirmed that Polanski did not vote at the 2026 local elections. This contradicted his claim that he voted for the Greens’ mayoral candidate in Hackney.
In April 2026, two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green, London. In response, Polanski reposted a social media message criticising the police for "repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man [the attacker] in the head" when he was incapacitated from the Taser. He was criticised by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and Prime Minister Starmer for the language used in the Tweet. According to YouGov, it was this incident which forged a significant dent in Polanski’s approval.
Three months later, Polanski collaborated with a photographer on Instagram in a post containing twenty pictures of a Green Party event. One photo featured a man wearing a t-shirt plastered with an image of a guillotine and the words "we're only making plans for Nigel,” insinuating violence towards Nigel Farage. On three occasions in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, Polanski refused to apologise to Farage.
Most of all, Polanski's plunge was authored by his opponents. Shortly after the local elections, the distinctively popular Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham began a masterfully choreographed ascent to Downing Street. He won a by-election, the support of 379 Labour MPs and the party’s leadership. On 20 July, Burnham became Prime Minister. He says Britain made a “series of wrong turns in the 1980s,” claims his ideology of Manchesterism opposes neo-liberalism and has apologised for Starmer’s stance on the Gaza War. This language appeals to supporters of the Greens. More in Common reported, in August 2026, 4% of Labour voters at the last general election supported the Greens, compared to 13% in May.
This means former Green supporters have formed the “Burnham bounce,” a phenomenon in which Labour eclipsed Reform in opinion polls. That translated into electoral defeat. At the by-election to replace Burnham as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, the Greens claimed it was a straight contest between them and Reform UK. In reality, they won a distant third place with 12% of the vote.
Conclusion
Polanski has acted as the most significant leader of the Greens in its history. The party doubled its membership, gained nearly 10 points in the opinion polls and acted as a major force in the political arena for the first time. Following several scandals, Polanski now suffers a net negative 29% popularity - therefore he is the second least popular major party leader. Nonetheless, a hunger for Green policies remains. ¾ of Britons support a wealth tax. The ball is in Burnham’s court. If he fails to embrace progressive policies, then increased numbers of Labour supporters will leave. At that point, a different Green could pick up the mantle.
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