Zack Polanski is on the brink of the sack as Greens leader today after being humiliatingly beaten in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, trailing more than 3,000 votes behind Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali. The Mail has more.
The result sparked a welter of criticism, with rumours swirling of a plot to oust him. The party was already engaged in a bitter civil war over the notorious ‘Zionism is Racism’ motion passed at its conference in Brighton on Sunday.
A chastened Polanski fronted up to the media this morning, insisting he was “absolutely” planning to stay on as leader.
He again defended leaving the conference and abstaining on the Israel motion – which proposed a single Palestinian state and was condemned as antisemitic by critics.
Polanski – who is Jewish – said he had been fighting “one of the most important elections in our recent history and people in that election said they wanted to see me on the ground”.
Pressed if he supported the motion, Polanski told Sky News: “I would have supported the motion as amended. It wasn’t amended, so no.”
But he added: “Ultimately, I agree with the substance of the motion. Where I disagree is the idea the Green Party should be deciding what the future of the region looks like.”
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Polanski repeatedly refused to say whether he believed the state of Israel should exist. “What I want is to see a safe space for Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.
Polanski said that after his interviews he was “going home to watch Traitors” before getting some sleep.
But his problems look to be deepening with the chair of the Jewish Greens, Vivien Lichtenstein, calling for him to quit this morning.
One of his predecessors has also refused to endorse him continuing in the role, accusing him of going “missing” during the antisemitism row.
Caroline Lucas, former MP and leader of the Greens from 2003 to 2006, 2007 to 2012 and from 2016 to 2018, said he should have opposed the “dangerous” move by hardline pro-Palestinians activists.
Worth reading in full.
Abdi-Wali’s 45.2% looks impressive, until you realise the turnout was just 38.6%, meaning Abdi-Wali was elected with the votes of just 17.4% of the electorate – under one in five of those registered to vote. It was also Labour’s lowest tally there on record.
Stop Press: The Greens are facing an investigation by Britain’s equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, after the Campaign Against Antisemitism reported the party for adopting a policy stating that “Zionism is racism”.
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“Zack Polanski would doubtless have loved to win the Holborn by-election. He managed to triple the Greens’ share of the vote, in a difficult seat for the party and in the midst of Labour’s short Burnham honeymoon.
Yet the media reaction is as one: shouldn’t Polanski resign? The question isn’t a question at all. It’s a prompt your brain is supposed to interpret as proof he’s failed, he’s damaging the party, he needs to be replaced.
It’s intended to bypass the reality that Polanski has turned the party’s fortunes around in terms of vote share and MPs, that the Greens are now a major insurgent force in UK politics, that he helped drive Starmer out of office and is driving Burnham further left than either Burnham or the Blairite Labour bureaucracy are inclined to go to win back the left.
The sanctions against Israel’s illegal settlements happened because of the Polanski-led Greens, not because Labour suddenly saw the light – after three years of conspiring in a genocide.
The Green surge under Polanski is also driving the break-up of the cosy two-party closed shop that has overseen the wrecking of Britain’s industrial base and the economy’s dependency on a financial… Read more »
Whether or not “Polanski” goes, there’s clearly enough anti-Semitic feeling in the Green Party for the members to continue along that path. Otherwise that infamous members’ motion would never have been passed.
Zac, mate, you are now banned from Israel.
When your Muslim friends finally take over – something you contributed to – where are you going to go?
Who will want you, with your gay Jewish background?
I am baffled by most of the comments on this result this morning. Labour’s vote share fell and the Greens efficiently hoovered up the proportion of the vote that Starmer lost in 2024 to the Corbynite independent; the other parties were nowhere. The result puts the constituency well within the range of a Green win at the next election, if (when) Labour have royally cocked everything up in the meantime. It’s not good news for Burnham and I doubt it will encourage him to go the the polls early.
Yes it’s hardly a humiliating defeat
Polanski should not be sacked for losing a by-election. These are often hard to predict. In this case the ethnic population went more to Labour than Green so the result was as seen.
He should have been sacked long ago for encouraging sectarian division in society and for the lies he has told about himself and the Jews.
And for being an absolute kh ant of the first order.
David Paulden to his teenage mates, if he had any.