For the first time in a while, the Green Party’s leadership election has turned heads.
This latest contest pitted Zack Polanski – a self-described ‘eco-populist’, who maintains that the Greens need to be ‘bolder’ on economic and environmental issues – against Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns: more traditional Green candidates, who are all about ‘broad appeal’ and getting more MPs in Parliament.
Polanski won the leadership election by a landslide, gaining almost 85 percent of the vote. He achieved this by explicitly tapping into the anti-establishment mood that exists in society.
Throughout the contest, Polanski’s campaign videos laid out his opposition to the genocide in Gaza, to Farage’s racist rhetoric, and to what many see as the sleaze and scandal of Westminster.
In turn, Polanski has said that, under his leadership, the Greens must transform from being a party that only cares about ‘nature’, into one that will campaign for “redistributing wealth, funding public services, and calling out the genocide in Gaza.”
This leadership contest therefore reflects a deeper existential question for the Green Party, as it reckons with what kind of party it actually is.
Members and activists are asking: should the Greens be a youth-centred and decidedly left-wing party, concerned with the climate catastrophe, the cost-of-living crisis, and Gaza alike; or a single-issue party, reliant on middle-class voters to gather more MPs and local councillors, with the aim of exerting mild pressure on the government when it comes to environmental reforms?
Who is Zack Polanski?
Zack Polanski has had a mottled political career so far. He started off as a local council candidate for the Liberal Democrats, engaging in the antisemitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn, before he joined the Green Party in 2017.
In 2022, he became the deputy leader of the Greens.
Polanski clearly targeted his leadership campaign at grassroots members of the Green Party. Basing himself on younger and fresher layers, Polanski hopes to catapult the Greens’ relevancy by facing the party towards the radical anger that exists in society.
Polanski has consciously appealed to the “anti-system” layer within the Greens. And he has taken aim at “Farage and his billionaire mates” for whipping up the culture war and anti-migrant sentiment – distractions that Polanski correctly “calls bullshit” on.
⏳ Final week to sign up to the Green Party.
🗳️ Vote for Bold Leadership on August 1st. pic.twitter.com/lx1DWYdHCj
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) July 23, 2025
Instead, it’s the “super-rich and their yachts” that the new Green leader says are responsible for the crumbling NHS and obscene rents. So far, so good.
Frustrated with Starmer’s intensification of Tory cuts, militarism, and subservience to the diktats of the bankers, you can see why around 30 percent of young (18-25), economically-insecure voters are looking at the Green Party.
Even still, the extent to which Polanski’s Green Party can indeed “tap into people’s anger” – as he’s promised – has its limits. The Greens have a reputation for being all bark and no bite.
Green surge?
The Green Party has undergone something of a transformation since the last general election.
In last year’s national vote, the party secured four seats in the House of Commons. This quadrupled their number of MPs, from the usual one in Brighton, the Greens’ longstanding stronghold.
Across England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, the Greens secured a total vote share of 6.7 percent.
For some in the Green Party, particularly Ramsey and Chowns, this was a sign that the Greens were on the up-and-up. All that was needed, they claimed, was to stick firmly to the current course, and soon Green MPs would flood Parliament.
This is a fundamental misreading of why the Greens were so successful at the last election, however.
In truth, the Greens were one of the beneficiaries of the collapse of the Tory-Labour duopoly, which has since become a major feature of British politics.
Farage’s Reform has overwhelmingly benefited from the decline of the Tories. Yet there has been a significant absence of a party on the left capable of capitalising on the discontent towards Starmer’s Labour; a party that can effectively tap into the growing anti-establishment sentiment in society on a clear, class basis.
The Greens have partially filled this vacuum. A recent YouGov poll, for example, stated that 13 percent of Green voters see the fact that they are “different from the main parties” as their most attractive quality. This was the 2nd highest reason given by the party’s supporters, behind the Greens’ stance on climate change.
Similarly, a June 2025 poll amongst voters defecting from Labour to the Greens showed that 54 percent had switched because the former was no longer “Labour enough”. 32 percent gave their dislike of Keir Starmer as their main reason.
Clearly, a disaffection with all the mainstream parties, driven by deepening austerity and instability, is what’s really turning heads – for now – towards the Greens.
Fight the billionaires
All of this has certainly ruffled a few feathers within the Green Party itself.
In a recent LBC debate, for example, Adrian Ramsey stumbled over a question about whether or not he liked his current deputy leader and leadership competitor, Polanski. He eventually found a suitably diplomatic answer. But clearly the conflict over how best to capitalise on the deep fissures in British politics has shaken nerves.
Middle-class establishment types within the Green Party have already described Polanski’s promise to transform the party as a “hostile takeover”.
Terrified by the young layers who have entered the Greens, seeking some kind of outlet for their anger, the party’s traditional, older demographic find themselves very much blindsided; fearful of the radicalised youth who want to fight to change the world.
That said, it remains to be seen whether Polanski’s talk about fighting “the one percent” and “unifying the 99 percent” against “corporations and the super-rich” is more than just ‘eco-populist’ verbiage.
Unless he and the Greens put forward a clear socialist programme, centred around expropriating the billionaires and nationalising the commanding heights of the economy, then these bold phrases will remain just that: mere words.
The exact direction that the Green Party will take is yet to be determined. It’s clear, however, that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new left party, if launched boldly, could take off and cut across the Greens’ base – particularly amongst the youth.
The Green Party is currently polling at 9 percent. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Britons, and one-third of 16-34 year-olds, would consider voting for the Corbyn-Sultana party.
At the same time, according to other recent surveys, around 30-40 percent of young people in Britain have a positive view of communism.
For all the unusual attention this Green Party leadership election has garnered, therefore, it’s likely that the fresh layers of young people drawn towards the Greens in recent times will soon be looking beyond what Polanski has to offer.
The Revolutionary Communist Party welcomes all those wanting to get organised in the fight against the billionaires and their chaotic system.
