Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party of England and Wales, has pledged that antisemitism will not be tolerated under his leadership and called for the party to unite after a difficult week.
Writing in the Guardian, Polanski said nobody would be made unwelcome because of their background, their faith or where they worship. He said he would meet any group within the party that fears victimisation in order to establish what it needs to feel safe and welcome.
His intervention followed the passing at the party’s conference of a motion entitled “Zionism is racism”, which he said had stirred strong feelings among many members and the wider public, and which had raised questions about his own approach to it.
Polanski described himself as a Jewish man who grew up in a Zionist household. He said the story he was told about Israel was one of destiny and safety, framed as “a land without a people for a people without a land”.
He said he had since learned about the people who did live on that land and what had happened to them — Palestinians driven from their homes and slaughtered en masse, and those who remain living under an apartheid system that denies them fundamental rights, including self-determination.
He said the motion was imperfect and difficult to handle, because its substance chimed with his understanding of Zionism as the ideology underpinning the displacement and genocide of Palestinians. He said he shared that view with many other Jewish people, including the Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, one of those who supported the motion.
At the same time, Polanski said Zionism was not easily defined and that for many Jewish people it is bound up with identity, safety and belonging. In his view, it is not the job of a political party to tell people what to believe, and a narrow focus on definitions is neither desirable nor strategic.
He said there were parts of the motion he did not agree with, including any attempt to dictate the future shape of a state in Israel and Palestine. While many people understandably regard the idea of a two-state solution as standing in the way of concrete action to end the unbearable status quo, he said he believed the British government, let alone the Green party, should not be deciding the future for Israelis and Palestinians.
Polanski said he had made clear before the vote which amendments he wanted to see made, and that he was disappointed they did not pass.
Asked why he was not present for the vote, he said his priority had been fighting a hugely consequential byelection for the party and that he had put all his energy into the race in Holborn and St Pancras, despite Labour choosing the polling date so close to the conference. He said he knew some people felt let down by that decision and that he heard them.
Polanski said he wanted to win the Holborn and St Pancras byelection, but that the party’s result showed it now poses a greater threat to Labour in seats of that kind than ever before, citing the polling expert John Curtice. He said the Greens tripled their vote share in a seat Labour has comfortably held since 1983 and forced Labour to campaign hard in a constituency it would once have taken for granted, describing the party as the first serious nationwide threat to Labour on its left in modern political history.
The Green leader, a member of the London assembly, said he stood for the leadership in 2025 when the party was at a crossroads, after what he called the transformative leadership of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay had taken it to electoral success on a scale it had never previously seen.
He said the party has recorded unprecedented wins this year, from its first parliamentary byelection victory to landslide council and mayoral wins in former Labour strongholds. Those successes, he said, moved Labour, helped topple Keir Starmer — who was replaced by a prime minister unarguably to his left — forced a change in tone in the government’s relations with Israel and led ministers to row back on some of their anti-migrant policies.
Polanski added that the party’s next phase would unfold in a landscape that is clearly more challenging, with Andy Burnham enjoying a honeymoon phase and yet to make the “difficult decisions” that will reveal who loses out under his government. He said those unpopular choices will probably start at Burnham’s fast-approaching first budget.
On internal reform, Polanski said the Greens have grown to a size nobody could have anticipated when he became leader and that party democracy must evolve accordingly — creating wider engagement for members, giving leaders more responsibility for setting strategic direction, and making processes as robust and accessible as possible.
He said that unity must be deployed in the service of changing the country for the better. He argued the government is on course to deliver the worst parliamentary term for living standards in modern times, with energy bills expected to rise again this winter and rent increases forecast to accelerate. He said Burnham is offering no concrete support with bills and ruling out any controls on rents, while Reform UK continues to use cost of living pressures to stir up division in communities.
Polanski said the Green party’s principled ideas have never been more needed, pointing to policies ranging from an emergency brake on rents to full public ownership of water companies, and said the party is offering solutions the government will not go near unless it is forced to.
Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green party of England and Wales and a member of the London assembly.
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