By coincidence, I meet Zack Polanski, the 42-year-old deputy chief of the Green party, in a restaurant on the identical bridge – Waterloo – the place he was first arrested for his half in an Extinction Riot protest. “I used to be main the cost on the very first day of the very first rally,” he begins. He has a dewy, wide-eyed look and fairly a nerdy supply, very enthusiastic, with no aspect to it. It takes a little bit of getting used to, however after you have, you’re all in. “I didn’t intend to get arrested. XR ran coaching on what to do in case you get arrested and the ramifications of it, and I didn’t go to any of them, as a result of I simply wished to be on the sidelines and chant. However partly from being an actor, I’ve bought a very loud voice.” Somebody requested him to guide the mantra from the entrance, which he didn’t need to do. “I at all times assume marginalised communities needs to be on the entrance, not me. And the one motive I say that’s as a result of there’s a parallel with how I see exemplary management – it’s not being out within the entrance, saying ‘Come this fashion’, it’s being inside and shifting collectively.” Nonetheless, he ended up on the entrance, and noticed between one and 200 cops. “I bear in mind one pointing at me, and I heard: ‘Get him’.” Earlier than he knew it, he was in handcuffs.
Polanski, who can also be chair of the London Meeting Setting Committee, is standing for chief of the Inexperienced occasion, promising a radical new “eco-populism”. When he first introduced his intention to face, the transfer was portrayed in some quarters as a bid to oust Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, present co-leaders, which he rejects. The Greens elect new co-leaders each two years (Ramsay and Denyer had a three-year time period due to the overall election; each are actually MPs. Denyer has already announced she won’t stand, however Ramsay is working once more, in a joint bid alongside fellow new MP Ellie Chowns). Polanski says it’s a superbly workable mannequin to have a Inexperienced MP as a parliamentary occasion chief and a separate chief of the occasion at massive. “Somebody who can lead the occasion for the nation, and be accountable to the membership … I’ve mirrored on this as a result of the Inexperienced occasion has by no means had a solo male chief earlier than, albeit a homosexual and Jewish one.” He’s bashed these questions round in his head: the tensions between id and sophistication politics, which I assume may very well be distilled into “might a person ever lead a radical progressive occasion?”; the concept of the sturdy chief (slightly than co-leaders) and the way a lot the media must see one – and whether or not it’s in opposition to the Inexperienced DNA to have one. He’s principally determined that, as legitimate as all of the arguments and counter-arguments are, sod it, he’s going for it.
He emphasises how a lot he respects Denyer and Ramsay, who, in 2024’s common election, bought the most effective outcomes the occasion has ever had, with virtually two million votes. Neither is his management bid a criticism of the native election outcomes, although all of the power appears to be with Reform, and the Greens are inevitably casualties of that. “It’s blended,” he says, “it’s a very stable set of outcomes. We’re the one occasion that has gained within the final eight units of native elections. In every of these years, virtually with out failure, the Inexperienced vote has been described as a ‘shock’, however what number of instances are folks going to be shocked?
“Reform did very well, you’d be a denier to not admit that, however the asymmetry in how their success has been reported, in comparison with ours, is actually noticeable.” It’s not that he thinks his occasion is languishing, in different phrases – simply that he needs it to be bolder. By eco-populism, he means go after billionaires, go after water firms, go after companies. He means retake patriotism. “We should always love our nation. Loving your neighborhood is loving your nation.” He means put the local weather on the centre of every part – however always remember that these will seem to be summary conversations to individuals who can’t put meals on the desk. He needs to guide a celebration that actively seeks “to enhance folks’s materials situations, proper right here and proper now”. And the issue with these large, hopeful guarantees of justice and alter, is that everybody, from Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, from Keir Starmer to Ed Davey, makes them. This food regimen of disappointment has all the identical word-ingredients. However the distinction with the Greens, Polanski says, is that they imply it, and the reply is best storytelling. “Far too typically, the occasion leads from a coverage and knowledge area. Our MPs, who’re glorious, are a scientist, an engineer, a renewables skilled and a former MEP. We don’t have storytellers. Now we have such a robust story to inform.”
Polanski’s personal story is that he was born in Salford, his dad and mom divorced when he was fairly younger, his mum is an actor, his dad works in a DIY store. “I’m not the son of a device maker, I’m the son of a device vendor,” he clarifies, very mildly mocking the political cliche of making an attempt to parade working-class credentials. His wasn’t a political household, and it’s taken years to get right here, the place his dad and mom each vote Inexperienced. Way more formative than occasion politics, when it comes to how he handles distinction and battle, is that he “grew up in a really Zionist family, raised to actually imagine that Israel was the centre of every part and have to be defended in any respect prices. And that’s very completely different to my politics now, in order that’s been a very arduous journey, however I at all times caveat this with nothing is as traumatic as it’s to stay in Palestine.
“Of all of the criticism I’ve obtained in my profession as a politician,” he continues, “probably the most vicious has come from so-called mainstream Jewish communities. I very a lot establish as Jewish, I’m very proud to be Jewish, I’m very a lot concerned in Jewish cultures, however I’m actually not a Zionist, and that’s seen as the final word betrayal.”
He went to Stockport Grammar, a personal faculty, on a scholarship. He hated it, bought kicked out, and went to a sixth type school. “I bear in mind completely loving it and thriving, and all of the sudden going, ‘Oh, that is what range looks like. That is what it looks like when everybody’s not homogeneous.’” Then he went to drama faculty in Atlanta, Georgia, a fairly random place to go to do a Shakespeare course, which he has no reply to, besides that it sounded enjoyable. At this stage, he nonetheless felt that “politics was a unclean factor that didn’t actually change something. It wasn’t till I went to America, and noticed the inequality, the racism, the homophobia, that I began to get up.”
Initially, that took a fairly anarchic type. He labored for neighborhood initiatives with homeless folks and migrants, “serving to folks to inform their tales, but in addition encouraging them to articulate and empower themselves. I did that for years, and I don’t remorse the work. However I additionally stored feeling this deep frustration. You may role-play that somebody is overcoming their oppressor, however really, if the systemic limitations are nonetheless there, you’re simply setting somebody up for failure. Individuals would depart a undertaking feeling so pumped up and able to go, and so they’d see them a yr or two later and the issue would nonetheless be there.”
He moved again from the US to London within the mid-00s and remembers strolling to work as a result of he didn’t have the bus fare, planning his day round when he might get some free lentils from the Hare Krishnas close to Russell Sq. (he’s vegan, by the best way – however very insistent that you simply don’t need to be a vegan to vote Inexperienced). “That’s how I used to be going to make the lease work.” Nonetheless, he’s very clear that “if the shit hit the fan, I might nonetheless have had the financial institution of mum and pop” and that there’s a distinction between the briefly skint and the grindingly poor. “However I’m extra within the a lot larger hole which I see between the tremendous rich and the remaining. We create divisions between the working class and the center class, when the true downside is folks incomes more cash of their sleep than you would earn in your life. The true downside is the oligarchy.”
He describes a number of the theatre he was making right now, with the corporate that later turned Punchdrunk – wild, participatory productions through which the viewers is invited to change the course of occasions. In a single efficiency, an viewers member rugby-tackled one of many actors to stop a homicide. In one other, Polanski performed a frontrunner stewarding the viewers into an environmental disaster, and so they needed to overthrow him. So sure, they have been political, as a result of life is, however he was prepared for a extra formal intervention.
He began by becoming a member of the Lib Dems, and standing as a councillor in north London in 2016. “That was for one very clear motive,” he says. “Proportional illustration – it’s at all times been actually vital to me.” He joined the Greens the next yr, was elected a member of the London Meeting in 2021, and deputy chief of the Greens in 2022.
He’s at all times been an extremely good communicator, and was an everyday on exhibits like Cross Questions on LBC as quickly as he had a presence in his occasion. His expertise as an actor has left Polanski with a genuinely uncommon fashion of political communication – he doesn’t equivocate, his method is kind of pressing and arresting, he by no means drones, however neither is he embarrassed to say one thing quite simple, even when it sounds schlocky, or boastful. He tells me that the video he launched asserting his management bid has been seen 1.4m instances. “It’s had tons of, perhaps even hundreds of individuals responding, and I might say 99% of these issues are, ‘Is that this what hope looks like?’”
Additionally, distinctively, there are guidelines he received’t play by. There are every kind of unstated norms in present affairs chat. It’s not thought of stylish to level out that representatives from a rightwing thinktank are probably talking for the pursuits of capital, slightly than “abnormal folks”, as a result of that will be taking part in the person not the ball. A Tory may say “multiculturalism has failed”, and so they imply “I favor monoculturalism”, however you’re not allowed to name them racist, as a result of that’s advert hominem, although, come on, what else are you going to name somebody who prefers society to all come from one tradition? I bear in mind being struck final yr, when three folks have been shouting at Polanski as a result of he’d used the “r” phrase. He’s a storyteller, however he’s not a youngsters’s entertainer – typically the story goes to be fairly difficult.
When he launched his management bid, and solely the terminally on-line would know this, a spontaneous neighborhood on X sprang into motion, saying: “Isn’t he that boob hypnotist?” The neighborhood itself included an odd coalition of pro-Russian, anti-trans and pro-Zionist accounts, however the story has a grain of reality. In 2013, Polanski had a hypnotherapy follow, and a Sun journalist went as a shopper, requested him if he might make her assume herself some larger boobs, and the remaining – properly, you’ll be able to learn for your self. To be trustworthy, even when he’d really set himself up as a breast-enlarger, I’d nonetheless have given it a move – he didn’t know he’d need a profession in politics, he was solely simply 30. For those who’ll stay on free meals with a purpose to make immersive theatre, there are most likely different stuff you’d contemplate. I solely point out all this as a result of there are individuals who will make it their enterprise that this story canines Polanski for ever; that’s the world we’re in now. Odd persons are allowed into democratic politics, till they’re tough or widespread – or, heaven forbid, each – after which methods can be discovered to discredit them; it’s really a fairly good signal for his marketing campaign that it’s begun.
I’ve heard rumours of imminent Labour defections to the Greens, MPs disaffected by Starmer on Gaza or cosying as much as Trump, or cuts to incapacity allowances, or actually, take your choose, discovering their approach again to the left. Polanski is assured of 1 however received’t say who. That leap from pink to inexperienced is a stunning wrench even in case you’re a member, or only a voter. “I feel it’s the obvious factor on this planet,” Polanski says, “in case you align with our values, be part of us. I need to say to the hundreds of thousands of people that have supported Labour, you’re not leaving the Labour occasion. The Labour occasion has left you.”
