The British Green Party has leapfrogged the Labour and Conservative parties in a poll of the classic left-right parties for the first time. The British media also attribute the success to the newly elected party chairman Zack Polanski, who took over as party leader at the beginning of September. He describes himself as an “eco-populist”.
British politics is experiencing another earthquake. For the first time in a poll of electoral preferences, the Green Party won 17 percent of the vote, while the established classic parties found themselves behind it, each with 16 percent. It has thus risen to second place behind the protest party Reform UK of the nationalist Nigel Farage, who was largely responsible for the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union.
Zack Polanski Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
“We are just getting started. It is time to cut bills. And tax billionaires,” Polanski wrote on social media in response to the results of the Find out now survey. He also provided a link to join the party, adding: “If you want to see the Green Party fighting for reform, now is the time. This week the Greens also announced that their membership has passed 150,000.
However, Farage has long dominated the polls in the island nation. In the latest poll, his party would be supported by 32 percent of voters. In the last British parliamentary election, only 14 percent of them voted for him.
Polanski received a strong mandate from the Greens in early September to lead them in a more left-wing direction. He defeated his opponents Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns in a landslide, winning 85 percent of the vote.
After winning the vote, the self-proclaimed “eco-populist” promised to emulate Nigel Farage’s media-friendly tactics to deal not only with Reform UK, but also with the Labour Party. He said that the Greens under his leadership would not support Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government.
In the same speech, Polanski called Farage a “charlatan” who pretends to care about ordinary people, and added to applause: “My message to Labour is very clear: we are not here to be let down by you. We are not here to be worried by you. We are here to replace you.”
