Zack Polanski: 'Eco-populist' eyeing big gains for UK Greens

Supporters of Labour Party Senedd election candidate Huw Thomas after canvassing in the Llanrumney suburb of Cardiff, South Wales, on April 23, 2026. [AFP]

Zack Polanski, a pugnacious, self-styled "eco-populist" and one-time hypnotherapist, hopes to lead the Green Party to a landmark political breakthrough in British local elections on Thursday.

An expected swing to the party, which has long been regarded as marginal, under the fledgling 43-year-old leader could reshape local politics and the wider political landscape.

Rallying campaigners in south London before this week's polls, Polanski, a former community theatre worker, was given a rapturous welcome by party members delighted at the boost his leadership has brought.

Since being elected to lead the party in England and Wales in September 2025, Polanski, who is particularly active on social media, has clocked up an extra 100,000 party members.

The new leader had "turbocharged the party" less than a year after being elected as leader, Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary's University of London, told AFP.

The Greens were already in a good position to take advantage of voters' disillusion with Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party, "particularly among younger people and Muslim voters living in inner-city locations", he said.

"But under his leadership, it has a serious prospect of winning not just seats but maybe even control (although not sole control) of some councils," added Bale.

According to estimates by Pollsters YouGov, the Greens -- which have just five lawmakers in the UK parliament -- could come first in as many as eight of London's 32 councils.

Polanski has said he decided to stand for the leadership after seeing the party eclipsed by the far-right, anti-immigrant Reform UK party in previous local elections last May.

He has yet to win a seat in the UK parliament, while the party currently has only around 50 of the more than 1,800 local council seats in London.

A Green surge, combined with gains for Reform at the opposite end of the political spectrum, could result in a historic drubbing for Labour which has controlled some of the London councils expected to change hands for decades.

If that happens, it will be a triumph for Polanski who few outside his own party had heard of less than a year ago.

Born David Paulden in Salford in northwestern England in 1982, he grew up in a Jewish community. He adopted a version of his original familial name at the age of 18 in recognition of his Jewish heritage.

Educated at a private school on a scholarship, he has complained of being badly bullied for being gay.

He later found his niche studying drama followed by a career in community theatre.

He also worked as a hypnotherapist but has been forced to repeatedly apologise for a 2013 article in the tabloid The Sun in which he promised to use the power of the mind to try to enlarge a female client's breasts.

He joined the Liberal Democrats in 2015 before switching to the Greens in 2017 and becoming deputy leader in September 2022. He was elected to the London Assembly, which holds the Mayor of London accountable, in 2021.

The party scored a significant victory in February when it snatched a parliamentary seat from Labour.

The by-election campaign strayed away from environmental concerns and focused more on cost-of-living pressures, with the Greens positioning themselves as a left alternative to Labour, the traditional party of the working class.

Increased visibility has also led to greater scrutiny -- with mixed results.

Polanski has generated a string of negative headlines with personal views that are not Green policy.

In an interview in December with the influential The Rest is Politics podcast, he was heavily criticised by host Rory Stewart, a former Conservative minister, for his grasp of basic economics.

Co-host Alistair Campbell, ex-Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair's spin doctor, described him as "good on the vibe, zeitgeist stuff" but "weak" on details.

And there was controversy when days before two Jewish men were stabbed in north London last week, Polanski told an interviewer there was a "conversation to be had about whether it's a perception of unsafety or whether it's actual unsafety" among the UK Jewish community.

A retweet in the immediate aftermath of the attacks earned a scathing public rebuke from the head of the capital's police force. He later apologised.