Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW), a position he has held since September 2025.

Polanski is also a member of the London Assembly.

Political Career

Zack Polanski was elected leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in September 2025. In a decisive result, Polanski secured 84.1% of the membership vote, succeeding the co-leadership duo of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.

Polanski defeated a co-leadership joint ticket of Ramsay and Chowns, who was subsequently chosen by her Green colleagues in parliament to serve as the party’s parliamentary leader.

The election of Polanski, who had served as deputy leader of the Greens since September 2022, precipitated a shift away from the co-leadership model. Under the party’s rules, two deputy leaders were elected, namely Mothin Ali and Rachel Millward.

Polanski’s landslide election represented an overwhelming endorsement of his “eco-populist” platform.

Announcing his candidacy, Polanski stated: “We’re not visible enough. I don’t want to see our membership grow incrementally. I want to see us be a mass movement. There’s something here around eco-populism: still being absolutely based in evidence, science and data – and never losing that – but telling a really powerful story.”

Polanski called a change in how the Greens approached communications, and expressed a willingness to work with left-wing MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

He said: “If anyone’s looking for a leftwing vehicle for power and change in this country, the Greens are here right now, we’re surging, we have well established party infrastructure and we have hundreds of elected representatives across the country. Join us.”

Ramsay and Chowns argued that the Greens would not be able to “outshout” Reform with populist-style messaging. During the campaign, Chowns commented: “We’re not here to hold signs. We’re here to hold power.”

The contest was characterised by the two campaign’s contrasting styles. Ramsay argued that the “British people have had enough with populist approaches to politics that seek to simplify everything, that are all about chasing the next headline, the next set of likes, rather than real substance.”

During an LBC Radio debate, Ramsay struggled to say whether he personally liked Polanski. Under repeated questioning, Ramsey responded that they had “worked together” and he “enjoyed working with Zack”. Iain Dale, the LBC Radio host and debate moderator, told Ramsey he could not “even bring yourself to say that you like Zack Polanski”.

Ramsey responded: “Zack is a valued colleague; I like working with Zack.”

In the end, Polanski secured 20,411 votes (84.1%) among the Green membership. Chowns and Ramsay polled 3,705 votes (15.3%).

In a statement responding to Polanski’s election, Ramsay and Chowns congratulated the new Green leader and thanked “him for running such a strong and passionate campaign.”

They added: “Our party is in the strongest position in its history. We’re winning record numbers of seats, reaching people in every community and from across the political spectrum, and showing that Green politics is rooted in the issues that truly matter.

“As MPs, we remain fully committed to playing our part: holding this government to account and championing the policies needed for a fairer, greener and more liveable future.”

By October 2025, mere weeks after Polanski’s election, the Greens officially reached over 120,000 members, surpassing both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party.

Under Polanski’s leadership, the Greens have grown into a markedly more visible force – and a serious political threat to the Labour Party from the left. In late 2025, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a former Labour MP, and Jamie Driscoll, the former Labour mayor of North of Tyne, defected to the Greens.

Opinion polls in January 2026 placed the party on as high as 17%. According to an Ipsos survey, published at the start of 2026, Polanski’s net favourability rating stood at -15 – better than all national political leaders with the exception of the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey.

The Green Party’s surge since September 2025 has been linked to Polanski’s canny communications strategy and progressive disillusionment with the Labour Party under Keir Starmer as prime minister.

Under Polanski’s leadership, the Green Party won the Gorton and Denton by-election, held on 26 February 2026, in a historic victory. The outcome marked the first parliamentary by-election win in the Green Party’s history. Hannah Spencer, the party’s candidate, also established herself as the first Green MP to represent a constituency in the North of England.

The result of the Gorton and Denton by-election amounted to a significant setback for Starmer’s leadership – and exposed deep fractures in Britain’s established mould of politics. Together, the Greens and Reform accounted for nearly 70% of the vote.

At the 2026 local elections, the Green Party won 587 council seats and five councils. The party also won a place in the Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament (two seats) for the first time.

Polanski was elected as a member of the London Assembly in May 2021.

Polanski was the Green Party candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster constituency in the 2019 general election.

Polanski joined the Green Party in 2017. He was previously a member of the Liberal Democrats.

Political Views

The Greens are an environmentalist and progressive political party positioned on the left of British politics.

The party’s foundational ideological beliefs are set out in its official core values and “philosophical basis”. This latter document outlines the aims and beliefs of the party, providing the basis on which all its policies are agreed.

The opening to the Green Party’s philosophical basis states: “A system based on inequality and exploitation is threatening the future of the planet on which we depend, and encouraging reckless and environmentally damaging consumerism.

“A world based on cooperation and democracy would prioritise the many, not the few, and would not risk the planet’s future with environmental destruction and unsustainable consumption.”

The Greens’ 10-point statement of core values commits the party to “social and environmental justice, which supports a radical transformation of society for the benefit of all, and for the planet as a whole.”

The party’s 2024 general election manifesto, branded with the slogan “Real hope. Real change”, focused heavily on the cost of living and affordability.

Polanski has described his political programme as “eco-populism”.

During the 2025 Green leadership campaign, Polanski said: “Far too often, the party leads from a policy and data space. Our MPs, who are excellent, are a scientist, an engineer, a renewables expert and a former MEP. We don’t have storytellers. We have such a powerful story to tell.”

He added: “But I’m more interested in the much bigger gap which I see between the super wealthy and the rest. We create divisions between the working class and the middle class, when the real problem is people earning more money in their sleep than you could earn in your life. The real problem is the oligarchy.”

Before Politics

Polanski was born on 2 November 1982 in Salford, Greater Manchester. He studied drama and acting at Aberystwyth University and in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States.

Polanski moved to London after graduating.

Before becoming significantly involved in full-time politics, Polanski worked as an actor and later as a hypnotherapist. He ran a private hypnotherapy practice.

In 2013, Polanski was the subject of a Sun article in which he reportedly offered a journalist hypnosis to increase her cup size. Polanski has said the article misrepresented his position.

He became involved in political activism and joined the Green Party, driven by concerns about climate change and social inequality.

Personal Life

Polanski is openly gay and Jewish.

Trivia

Polanski is vegan.